Environmental Struggles Research Articles

India's Middle Classes and the Environment

AbstractThe focus of most analyses of environmental struggles and discourses in colonial and postcolonial India is on rural and forest areas, and on subalterns versus elites. Recently, however, there has been increased interest in urban environmental issues, and, to some extent, in India's (variously defined)‘middle classes’. This article reviews a range of literatures — environmental, social‐cultural and political — in order to draw out themes and arguments concerning the relationships between India's middle classes and the complex meanings and materialities of the environment. Three issues are explored in detail: civic indifference and the public sphere; environmental activism; and Hinduism and ecological thinking. The article emphasizes the importance of recognizing diversity and dynamism within the middle classes in relation to the environment. It argues the need to develop situated understandings of what constitutes ‘the environment’ amongst different middle class groups; and underlines the ways in which environmental issues reflect and are often emblematic of wider social and political debates.

"Like Nixon Coming to China": Finding Common Ground in a Multi-Ethnic Coalition for Environmental Justice

This article uses ethnographic fieldwork to illustrate how a multi-ethnic group of activists in Brooklyn, New York, formed a coalition for environmental justice in thhborhood. Until the late 1980s local activists had organized in separate and antagonistic movements, competing over access to housing, schools, and police protection. However, as they increasingly realized that the environment was an urban concern, and was subject to discrimination, activists added it to their organizing agendas. In so doing, activists began to construct an expansive environmental narrative that cast all minorities in the neighborhood as united in the face of disproportionately high pollution rates. Activists thus found that they could enhance their environmental struggles by creating environmental identities that superseded rigidly defined identities based on ethnicity. Through organizing for environmental justice, activists redefined the meaning and significance of ethnic differences. [ethnicity, environmental justice, social movements, urban United States]

All our relations: native struggles for land and life

W inona LaDuke (Anishanaabeg) is a high-profile environmental activist, director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, and most recently Ralph Nader’s Green Party vice presidential candidate. LaDuke’s 1999 nonfiction book All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life consists of overviews of eight distinct native land and environmental struggles taking place in North America and Hawai’i. This book conveys not only her philosophy about the colonial politics of tribal land struggle, but also her own contribution to the tribal identity, culture, and governance wars that currently rage in Indian Country. In keeping with LaDuke’s numerous articles, documented speeches, and interviews, All Our Relations presents a very narrow definition of authentic tribal or indigenous identity, relies on simplistic traditionalist rhetoric emerging from the identity wars, and then conditions legitimate tribal governance on the restrictive definition of authentic indigenity that she assumes her readers will innately accept to be true. All Our Relations has received praise from critics who evidence little complexity in their understanding of the history and politics of Indian Country. The overarching theme of this book seems to be to present LaDuke’s particular brand of native environmentalist as the true and noble native. These natives reject every last assimilationist trapping of modern life—their cultural practices undaunted by the white man’s laws and practices. However, beyond anecdotal references about rejection of brand-name and other nontraditional clothing choices, there is little substantive detail about how a traditionalist life is undaunted by outside influences. Traditionalism is nebulously defined and fits within a picture of a visually uncomplicated life:

Sacrificing the Forest: Environmental and Social Struggles in Chiapas

Sacrificing the Forest: Environmental and Social Struggles in Chiapas

A little corner of freedom: Russian nature protection from Stalin to Gorbachev

Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Environmental Activism and Social Identity 2. Archipelago of Freedom 3. The Road to Liquidation>: Conservation in the Postwar Years 4. Zapovedniki in Peril, 1948-1950 5. Liquidation: The Second Phase, 1950 6. The Deluge, 1951 7. In the Throes of Crisis: VOOP in Stalin's Last Years 8. Death and Purgatory 9. VOOP after Stalin: Survival and Decay 10. Resurrection 11. A Time to Build 12. A Time to Meet 13. More Trouble in Paradise: Crises of Zapovedniki in teh Krushchev Era 14. Student Movements: Catalysts for New Activism 15. Three Men in a Boat: VOOP in the early 1960s 16. Storm over Baikal 17. Science Doesn't Stand Still 18. Environmental Struggles in the Era of Stagnation 19. Enviromental Activism under Gorbachev

Local Environmental Struggles: Citizen Activism in the Treadmill of Production. Kenneth A. Gould , Allan Schnaiberg , Adam S. Weinberg

<i>Local Environmental Struggles: Citizen Activism in the Treadmill of Production</i>. Kenneth A. Gould , Allan Schnaiberg , Adam S. Weinberg

Book Review: Local environmental struggles: citizen activism in the treadmill of production

Book Review: Local environmental struggles: citizen activism in the treadmill of production

Local Environmental Struggles: Citizen Activism in the Treadmill of Production

In recent years, environmentalism in the US has increasingly emerged at the community level, focusing on local ecological problems. Correspondingly, the American environmental movement has exhorted its supporters to 'think globally' but 'act locally'. The authors examine this modern environmental mantra by analysing the opportunities and constraints on local environmental action posed by economic and political structures at all levels. The difficulties involved in local activism are explored in three case studies - a wetlands protection project, water pollution of the Great Lakes, and consumer waste recycling. The final chapter then reflects on the challenges facing citizen-worker movements in each case study, and concludes that, despite the inherent difficulties, any successful attempt at mobilisation must have a local component.

Local environmental struggles: citizen activism in the treadmill of production

Local environmental struggles: citizen activism in the treadmill of production

Macroeconomic volatility, investment anemia and environmental struggles in the Philippines

While its sacrifice of resource endowments is comparable to that of other developing countries, the Philippines does not have the strong record in capital accumulation and structural change of its Asian neighbors. A crisis-prone macroeconomy, traceable to a heavy dependence on volatile external finance and short-sighted macroeconomic management, explains the feeble rate of accumulation. Environmental losses can be traced both to extensive factors (economic and population growth) and intensive factors (unequal distribution and access to market resources). In the concluding section, this paper examines the feasibility of an alternative macroeconomic stance which invests in environmental regeneration and accepts a lower and steadier national economic growth rate.

Settlement Myth and Settlement Activity: Interrelationships in the Zionist Land of Israel

Settlement frontiers may bring about the production of political settlement myths leading future settlers to frontier settlements. Such myths may develop through three phases of geographical interpretation: (i) the realization or consumption of previous myths, (ii) ideological loading of the landscape and (iii) the emergence of mythical space. These phases, notably the latter, are expressed in various outlets of the collective memory and civil religion. Zionist political settlement myths may be interpreted as dealing with environmental struggles, social development and security. These myths are interrelated with several chains of local or regional settlement processes and events: produced myth comes to be consumed by later settlers. But the creation of such myths emanates from the urban cores of Jaffa, Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem.

Environmentalism and Economic Justice: Two Chicano Struggles in the Southwest

Ecological causes are championed not only by lobbyists or hikers. While mainstream environmentalism is usually characterized by well-financed, highly structured organizations operating on a national scale, campaigns for environmental justice are often fought by poor or minority communities. Environmentalism and Economic Justice is one of the first books devoted to Chicano environmental issues and is a study of U.S. environmentalism in transition as seen through the contributions of people of color. It elucidates the various forces driving and shaping two important examples of environmental organizing: the 1965-71 pesticide campaign of the United Farm Workers and a grazing conflict between a Hispano cooperative and mainstream environmentalists in northern New Mexico. The UFW example is one of workers highly marginalized by racism, whose struggle--as much for identity as for a union contract--resulted in boycotts of produce at the national level. The case of the grazing cooperative Ganados del Valle, which sought access to land set aside for elk hunting, represents a subaltern group fighting the elitism of natural resource policy in an effort to pursue a pastoral lifestyle. In both instances Pulido details the ways in which racism and economic subordination create subaltern communities, and shows how these groups use available resources to mobilize and improve their social, economic, and environmental conditions. Environmentalism and Economic Justice reveals that the environmental struggles of Chicano communities do not fit the mold of mainstream environmentalism, as they combine economic, identity, and quality-of-life issues. Examination of the forces that create and shape these grassroots movements clearly demonstrates that environmentalism needs to be sensitive to local issues, economically empowering, and respectful of ethnic and cultural diversity.

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Environmental Issues: Bullard, Robert D. (ed.). Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots.Environmental Issues: Szasz, Andrew. EcoPopulism: Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environmental Justice.Environmental Issues: Cernea, Michael M., and Scott E. Guggenheim (eds.).Environmental Issues: Gedicks, Al. The New Resource Wars: Native and Environmental Struggles Against Multinational Corporations.Community and Agricultural Issues: Andreas, Carol. Meatpackers and Beef Barons: Company Town in a Global Economy.Community and Agricultural Issues: Bell, Michael Mayerfeld. Childerley: Nature and Morality in a Country Village.Community and Agricultural Issues: Critchfield, Richard. The Villagers: Changed Values, Altered Lives, The Closing of the Urban‐Rural Gap.Community and Agricultural Issues: Bonanno, Alessandro, Lawrence Busch, William Friedland, Lourdes Gouveia, and Enzo Mingione (eds.).Community and Agricultural Issues: Walton, John. Western Times and Water Wars: State, Culture and Rebellion in California.Community and Agricultural Issues: Gasson, Ruth, and Andrew Errington. The Farm Family Business.Community and Agricultural Issues: Valle, Isabel. Fields of Toil: A Migrant Family's Journey.Community and Agricultural Issues: Lieber, Michael D. More Than a Living: Fishing and the Social Order on a Polynesian Atoll. Conflict and Social Change Series.Community and Agricultural Issues: Gist, Gladys Leffler. Chasing Rainbows.Life‐Cycle and Education Issues: Conger, Rand D., and Glen H. Elder Jr. (eds.).Life‐Cycle and Education Issues: Peterson, Steven A., and Robert J. Maiden. The Public Lives of Rural Older Americans.Life‐Cycle and Education Issues: Brown, Philip, and Hugh Lauder (eds.).

Accountability lost?: An environmental struggle over the economic feasibility of incineration

One of the first environmental struggles in Finland was the campaign of a local citizens' movement to close down the Kyläsaari incinerator in Helsinki. This campaign, taking place in the early 1980s, was a success. The course of this struggle, in relation to the governmental rationality of the waste management administration, is examined in this paper. The paper argues that the paternalist and cameralist mentality of the waste management authorities, who promoted the incineration alternative, was counterproductive. Shortcomings of the governmental rationality were especially recognizable in the accounting practices. The paper claims that a lack of accessibility, translatability and acceptability of accounts characterized the plans and calculations of the city's waste management administration. For this reason, the activists of the movement could challenge the waste management authorities also in the technical-economic domain.

The New Resource Wars: Native and Environmental Struggles against Multinational Corporations

The New Resource Wars: Native and Environmental Struggles against Multinational Corporations

The New Resource Wars: Native and Environmental Struggles Against Multinational Corporations.

The New Resource Wars: Native and Environmental Struggles Against Multinational Corporations.

The new resource wars: native and environmental struggles against multinational corporations

The new resource wars: native and environmental struggles against multinational corporations

Environment and efficiency lovers

T he 1990s will be a decade of struggle with environmental issues. Searching for reasons, we can tick off major accidents and activities that heightened ecological awareness in the late 1980s: the Valdez oil spill, the spewing of radiation from Chernobyl, massive timber cuttings in Brazil, medical waste on the nation's seashores, high-pitched debates on global warming, and the environment in Eastern Europe. But while these events and conditions capture our attention, similar disasters occurred in the past without being followed by a national ecological movement. Environmental struggles require more than a series of environmental calamities. Campaigns for change must have a political focus directed toward political decision makers who have the power to write and enforce comprehensive federal rules. The United States Congress, working through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), commands such attention. Recent environmental disasters have coincided with political action and have reinforced. The Clean Air Act has been revised to include tighter emissions standards. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability (Superfund) legislation was up for reauthorization in 1991. International conferees are discussing global warming, and new efforts are being made to bring a coordinated approach to the control of pollution that crosses national boundaries. Always alert to the mood of the public, advertising agencies have also responded. Soft drink bottles are now labeled environmentally safe. Deodorants and hair spray are hailed for their ecologically neutral propellants or for having no propellant at all. Advertising copy writers waxed enthusiastic to a degree that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is now scrutinizing environmental claims made for consumer goods that might cause unwitting buyers to think they are buying ecologically safe products when in fact they are not. The banter about environmentally friendly products is joined by efforts to organize recycling stations across communities nationwide and by the promulgation of rules to guide the safe construction and operation of landfills. California is taking the lead in developing tighter auto-emissions standards and other environmental rules that exceed and will influence the standards set at the federal level. California's South Coast Air Quality District is discussing some rather drastic steps to reduce driving. Consumers of fast-food hamburgers shops may no longer enjoy drive-up service. Gasoline-powered lawnmowers may be subject to emissions controls. Commuters may face driving restrictions to reduce the flow of cars into and out of cities. Some might argue that the magnitude of environmental degradation and the high and lofty goals of the environmental movement are sufficient to command general support for new packets of legislative solutions. Environmental degradation is real. With sufficient exposure, toxic chemicals can be deadly to humans. Oil spills do destroy aquatic life and property values. Contaminated aquifers do raise the cost of drinking water. If cleanliness is next to godliness, how can we have too much? More than twenty years' experience with federal programs to improve the quality of air, water, and earth demonstrate that things are not so simple. Lofty goals embodied in detailed federal legislation do not translate into effective solutions. Massive expenditures on pollution control do not necessarily result in equally significant improvements in environmental quality.