White environmental subjectivity and the politics of belonging

In a society dominated by a colorblind approach to racial difference, racial categories are often viewed as unchanging and constructed in a time past. This article examines the making of racial categories and subjectivities in everyday perceptions and portrayals of place and belonging related to environmentalism. It examines the ways in which middle-class white people, who engage regularly with Latino immigrants, simultaneously construct the racial category of ‘white’ and affirm their own belonging in Boulder, Colorado through an exclusionary discourse of environmentalism. In Boulder, immigrants and non-immigrant Latinos are often portrayed as unaware of environmentalism, not interested in environmentalism, and/or too busy or poor to participate in environmentalism. In interviews, white residents of the city reproduce discourses of privilege and exclusion through environmental discourses and reinforce their own white environmental subjectivity as the norm. The insider/outsider division established through environmental discourse in Boulder is a specific example of how exclusion is enforced through the racialization of ‘natural’ spaces and environmental activities and how environmentalism itself is an important articulation of difference.     

世界范围内的环境保护主义:一种不同的观点

亚克西姆·纳德考(Joachi m Radkau)不仅是德国最重要的环境史学家,而且代表了一代人对1970年代环境事件的看法。本文意欲从更加年轻一代的观点出发,补充亚克西姆·纳德考的观点。1970年代的环境保护主义者经常用他们那个时代的议程作为自我证据,但是年轻一代的环境保护主义者倾向于采取一种更加批判的态度来看待此问题,即从后来发生的事实的角度来看待。因此,过去的环境议程常常被年轻的一代看作是强迫的和错误指导的议程。环境保护主义者经常从一个宽泛的环境问题中选择几个问题给予特别的关注,而历史学家需要仔细地研究是什么指导了环境保护主义者的选择。因此,不仅仅将环境保护主义看作是知识分子的事业,而且看作是他们的一种生活方式,并且进一步考察环境议程与环境保护主义者的日常生活是如何联系起来的。这是一件有意义的事情。此外,环境史学家需要注意环境争论中不同的国家特色。许多国家都发展出了完全不同的具有国家特色的环境保护主义,尽管近年来世界环境保护主义出现了趋向一致的倾向,但是这些不同的国家发展道路还没有褪色到足以被忽视的地步。最后,本文呼吁,要对环境意识从一代向下一代的转变给予更多的关注。将来的环境保护主义也许与今天的环境保护主义有相当大的区别,或许环境保护主义将来根本就不存在了。进一步仔细观察,环境保护主义是一个不稳定的、脆弱的事物。     

Frank Cass THE JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

Much environment and development discourse assumes that women are the ‘natural’ constituency for conservation interventions. This article attempts to illuminate this assumption with the lens of a gendered critique of environmentalisms (technocentric, ecocentric and non-western). How do the intellectual roots of Western environmentalisms influence the positions, or non-positions, of contemporary environmentalism with regard to gender? What does research on environmental perceptions in non-Western societies imply about gender differentiation in environmental relations? The article concludes that there are no grounds for assuming an affinity between women's gender interests and those of environments and that such a view is symptomatic of the gender blind, ethnocentric and populist character of western environmentalisms. By contrast the application of gender analysis to environmental relations involves seeing women in relation to men, the disaggregation of the category of ‘women’, and an understanding of gender roles as socially and historically constructed, materially grounded and continually reformulated. The issue of how far women's gender interests and environmental interests go hand in hand leads us to pose a broader question of the degree to which environmental conservation is premissed upon social inequality.     

The environment and minor-party insurgency in Australian politics: the case of logging and the ‘liberals for forests’

It is known that many Liberal–National voters are environmentally conscious. However, the lack of importance of environmentalism in influencing voter behaviour in Australia, compared with socio-economic ideologies and issues, means that few Liberal–National identifiers are likely to find appeal in the parties which place most emphasis on protecting the natural environment, as these parties are generally Left-leaning with regard to socio-economic policy. Given the balance of influences on the vote, Liberal–National vulnerability on environmental issues would seem to be most exploitable by a Right-of-Centre environmental party. This article examines the case of the ‘liberals for forests’, a rare example of just such a party, which had some success in Western Australian State elections in 2001. The paper supports the notion that environmental issues, including those such as logging often linked with Left partisan ship, have the potential to influence vote choice, in a positive sense, on the Right as well as the Left of Australian politics. Implications for the Liberal Party and the party system are discussed.     

Citizen Participation and Government Choice in Local Environmental Controversies

This article uses a single, critical case to assess the plausibility of hypotheses that emerge from the literature on civic environmentalism. In particular, scholars have argued that local, collaborative environmental decision making is likely to yield solutions that are both more durable and environmentally superior to those generated by more conventional policymahing processes. The analysis suggests, however, that such outcomes are unlikely in the absence of stringent regulatory requirements established at the federal or state level. This is because local officials face fiscal constraints that exacerbate the already substantial disparity in political resources between citizens and development interests.     

Western leveraged pedagogy of Central and Eastern Europe: discourses of homophobia,tolerance, and nationhood

This article focuses on the relations between the two geo-temporal categories – Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and West/Europe – in discussions about sexual politics, homophobia, tolerance, and nationhood. It contributes to the existing literature about homonationalism and sexual nationalisms by introducing CEE to the debate's geographical loci, so far mostly invested in West/Europe and its relations to Islam. It argues that it is important to consider CEE in sexual nationalism debates because of its framing as the European (homophobic) Other in the emerging discourses of ‘homoinclusive Europe’. This article introduces the concept of leveragedpedagogy, which captures the specificity of the West/Europe – CEE discourses of sexual liberation, advancement, and backwardness. Leveraged pedagogy is a hegemonic didactical relation where the CEE figures as an object of the West/European ‘pedagogy’, and is framed as permanently ‘post-communist’, ‘in transition’ (i.e. not liberal, not yet, not enough), and homophobic. Such ‘taking care of’ CEE, it is argued, is a form of cultural hegemony of the Western EUropean liberal model of rights as the universal.     

The Development of Environmental Administration in Queensland and Western Australia: Why are they Different?

Western Australia and Queensland are often seen as the most developmentalist states in the Australian federation, largely because they remained less developed for longer and have seen much mineral and agricultural development in the latter part of the twentieth century. Developmentalism is usually seen as anathema to a commitment to environmental policy, which most states have taken on in response to environmentalism in the same period, yet these two developmentalist states exhibit markedly different trajectories in response to this environmentalist stimulus. This paper explores the reasons for these differences, finding a variety of causal factors including both socioeconomic influences (such as affluence and demographics), political structures, and personalities and the force of ideas. It suggests that we should be wary of monocausal explanations of such differences.     

Picturing the city: young people's representations of urban environments

Urban environments form the setting of everyday life for most Western young people. This article explores visual representations of cities made by young people in a range of environments within four countries. The findings inform a larger study on urban geographies within geography education. We analyse students' drawings of cities regarding physical characteristics, activities and issues. There are many commonalities between drawings from the four countries, the majority showing a ‘big, busy city’ representation with skylines, traffic and shopping areas. There are also distinctive characteristics for each set, for example Finnish students tended to emphasise environmental and social issues more than in the other countries. In relation to methodology, we conclude that drawings, supported by contextual information, are a useful source to understand young people's representations of cities. Further, this research supports thinking about how to merge young people's experiences and imaginaries with the teaching of urban geography.     

“Participation”, White Privilege and Environmental Justice: Understanding Environmentalism Among Hispanics in Toronto

Abstract: The environmental justice movement has highlighted not only the unequal distribution of environmental hazards across lines of race and class, but also the white, middle‐class nature of some environmentalisms, and broader patterns of marginalization underlying people's opportunities to participate or not. There is a significant body of work discussing Hispanic environmental justice activism in the US, but not in Canada. This paper draws on interviews with representatives of organizations working on environmental initiatives within the Hispanic population of Toronto, Canada to explore definitions of and approaches to environmentalism(s) and community engagement. Four interrelated “mechanisms of exclusion” are identified in this case study—economic marginalization; (in)accessibility of typical avenues of participation; narrow definitions of “environmentalism” among environmental organizations; and the perceived whiteness of the environmental movement. Taken together, these mechanisms were perceived as limiting factors to environmental activism in Toronto's Hispanic population. We conclude that the unique context of Toronto's Hispanic community, including contested definitions of “community” itself, presents both challenges and opportunities for a more inclusive environmentalism, and argue for the value of “recognition” and “environmental racialization” frameworks in understanding environmental injustice in Canada.     

Empire forestry and the origins of environmentalism

When and where did the environmental movement begin? To understand how a public endued with the principles of laissez-faire reversed in such short order a century-old policy of government land disposal, this paper examines how public ownership of land came to be celebrated, with a newly defined professional corps of government foresters such as Dietrich Brandis and Gifford Pinchot feted as popular heroes. Hard-headed environmentalists and legislators found in empire forestry a ready-made model to construct vast areas of the public domain as a utensil for not only environmental but state purposes—industrial, settlement, and budgetary. The empire forestry matrix of government reservations, fire protection, and revenue-enhancing forests solved the tension between romantic preservationist notions and laissez-faire ideals and gave the compromise from which modern environmentalism emerged: it posed environmental problems and solutions as a means to construct the state. This article traces the international trail of modern environmentalism from India, under Lord Dalhousie's forest charter, to the British colonies in Africa and Australasia where it matured, and finally to Canada, the United States and other parts of the globe where environmentalism permanently entered the pantheon of democratic political creeds.     

Living with anthropogenic climate change: Learning from environmental history to question narratives of doom,hope, and crisis

We are living with anthropogenic climate change and must address the causes and reduce the negative impacts on our planet, humans, and other species. This commentary offers a brief review of environmental history from deep time to recent waves of environmentalism demonstrating that climate change has occurred before; that people have faced perceived end times; and that predictions of doom have helped us to act to avoid that potential scenario. These are important lessons for how we may live today and into the future, given the shift from climate change denial to narratives of impending doom because we have already failed to act. The commentary presents a matrix of positions adopted in relation to climate change and environmentalism more generally, highlighting narratives of hope, doom, and urgency. While not exhaustive, these summarised positions alert us to possibilities and are intended to generate wider discussion about how we may live with anthropogenic climate change. We have to learn to live with anthropogenic climate change while addressing the causes and reducing the negative impacts on our planet, humans and on other species.     

The Ultimate "Other": Post-Colonialism and Alexander von Humboldt's Ecological Relationship with Nature

This article is a meditation on the overlaps between environmentalism, post‐colonial theory, and the practice of history. It takes as a case study the writings of the explorer‐scientist‐abolitionist Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), the founder of a humane, socially conscious ecology. The post‐colonial critique has provided a necessary corrective to the global environmental movement, by focusing it on enduring colonialist power dynamics, but at the same time it has crippled the field of environmental history, by dooming us to a model of the past in which all Euro‐American elites, devoid of personal agency, are always already in an exploitative relationship with the people and natural resources of the developing world. A close reading of Humboldt's work, however, suggests that it could provide the basis for a healthy post‐colonial environmentalism, if only post‐colonial critics were willing to see beyond Humboldt's complicity in colonial structures. In particular, this article attempts to rehabilitate Humboldt's reputation in the face of Mary Louise Pratt's canonical post‐colonial study, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. Humboldt's efforts to inspire communion with Nature while simultaneously recognizing Nature's “otherness” can be seen as radical both in his day and in ours. In addition his analysis of the link between the exploitation of natural resources and the exploitation of certain social groups anticipates the global environmental justice movement.     

Experimental Publics: Activist Culture and Political Intelligibility of Climate Change Action in the Hunter Valley,Southeast Australia

The ethnographic study of Western environmental activism opens up the prospect of studying subjectivities formed in opposition to dominant Western ideas and values, and yet encapsulated within Western societies and democratic polities. One of the directions in which it points the anthropologist, which is pursued in this article, is towards the study of the political lifeworlds of activists, their self‐identity as citizens and their embeddedness in the wider society. Environmental politics can be an emergent activity in citizens' lives, as expressed in John Dewey's concept of ‘the public’ as citizens who organise themselves to address the adverse consequences of situations that they experience in common (Dewey 1991[1927]). This paper focuses on a middle ground of social action between habitual daily practice, and the domain of institutional politics: groups of people in small voluntary organisations in the heavily coal‐mined Hunter Valley, Southeast Australia, who are moved to collective action to address the threatening aspects of anthropogenic climate change. Action group members variously articulate their reflexive understandings of the structural contradictions of environmentalism in corporate capitalist societies where values of consumerism and processes of individualization corrode collective concerns of citizenship‐based politics. These understandings inform activists' personal motivations, values and ideals for a ‘climate movement’, diverse modes of political action and striving for wider political intelligibility.     

Environmentalism,Culture, Ethnography

Such is the ubiquity of environmentalism as a significant community experience throughout the world that most anthropologists will nowadays find themselves attending to the concerns their respondents have for the environments which surround and sustain them. In this article, we take stock of some of the issues addressed, and the achievements realized, by environmental anthropology to date. First, we emphasize that there is already a literature which stands as testament to the variety of environmental issues ‐ water, whales and the weather, for instance ‐ on which anthropologists have original insights to offer. Second, we argue that an important anthropological focus is on how ordinary people think and talk about their environments, especially when faced with external forces that have to be responded to in innovative and creative ways in order to be effective. It is not the view from above or below, but the view from within environments that matters most in local settings, which anthropologists have been concerned to unravel. Third, we emphasize that the Asia Pacific region constitutes an exceptionally rich field for anthropological research. Studies already carried out in places as diverse as Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands, the Philippines, Indonesia, Chile and the Torres Strait make categorically clear that local and regional environmental concerns and conflicts are influenced by history, religion, Indigeneity, ethnicity, gender and other considerations that deserve critical anthropological enquiry. It is a crucial message that is endorsed and amplified by our fellow contributors in this special issue.     

Greening Without Conflict? Environmentalism,NGOs and Civil Society in China

This article argues that the specific features and dynamics of China’s environmentalism can be attributed to two factors: the ‘greening’ of the Chinese state at the time when environmentalism emerged, and the alternating politics of toleration and strict control of social organizations. As a result, environmentalism has developed in a gradual way, encompassing the various forms of ‘green’ NGOs that we see in the West and the ex–socialist states of Eastern and Central Europe. Yet, on the other hand, environmentalism was also robbed of the opportunity, as well as the immediate urgency, to openly confront the government. This is where it deviates from environmentalism in the West and the former Eastern–bloc countries.     

世界范围内的环境保护主义:在市民运动和政府决策之间

本文通过概述西方环境保护主义在市民与政府之间的发展历程,认识到环境保护主义在不同的时代有不同的讨论议题与内容,而不同的人群对于谁才是环境保护主义者的精英分子也有不同的看法。1970年前后是环境保护主义的转折点,从那时起,环境保护主义关注的议题由单一的要素转向一个综合的网络,并形成了全球范围的广泛联系,在大众运动和广泛的社会关注之下,环境保护主义的政治力量越来越多地显示出来。     

Determinism and Indeterminism in Foreign Geography Part I

The history of geographical determinism is traced from Antiquity through the Renaissance until, in the author's view, it was first introduced into geography by Carl Ritter. Friedrich Ratzel, by supplementing classical determinism with Social Darwinism, laid the basis for a modern determinism that led ultimately to the school of geopolitics. Geopolitics is found to have interested Western geographers even after its Nazi German version was discredited. The ideas of geographical determinism, aside from being used by the advocates of geopolitics, also led to the environmentalism of Ellen Semple and Ellsworth Huntington and its more modern versions. Efforts to moderate the initially extreme forms of environmentalism (Griffith Taylor's stop-and-go determinism, O. H. K. Spate's probabilism) are analyzed from the Marxist viewpoint.     

Interpellating ‘the people’ against environmentalists: The authoritarian populist response to environmental mobilizations in Turkey

The connections between authoritarianism, populism and environmental politics have recently attracted scholarly interest. Yet less attention has been given to the ‘hegemonic’ struggle that populist forces wage in the field of the environment in order to reproduce their power under challenges of environmental mobilizations. This study is an attempt to contribute to filling this gap. Combining the insights of Stuart Hall and Ernesto Laclau on populism, it scrutinizes the ways the authoritarian populism of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) government in Turkey was performed against the counter-hegemonic challenges of environmental mobilizations. I demonstrate that the AKP tried to restore its challenged hegemony by securing popular support to its environmentally exploitative and authoritarian practices in two ways. One is the construction of an antagonistic frontier between environmental actors and those interpellated as ‘the people’, and the other is the appropriation of environmentalism. With the former, the AKP aimed both to legitimize the exercise of coercive force against environmental mobilizations, and to obscure the inequalities, injustices, and uneven relations created by its exploitative use of the natural and urban environments, whereas with the latter it endeavoured to rob environmentalism of its subversive potential. The examination of the AKP case shows that populist forces, which come to power by capitalizing on the crises of the previous hegemonic status quo, may also have the capacity to survive the crises during their rule by reshaping their populisms.     

CHOOSING RESIDENCE,COMMUNITY AND NEIGHBOURS ‐THEORIZING FAMILIES’ MOTIVES FOR MOVING1

This article takes its point of departure from an ongoing research project that examines the connection between everyday life and choice of residence. The first component of this empirical study is an investigation of reasons given by families for moving out of Copenhagen to a commune ‐ Absalons Have in Trekroner – in a new suburban area close to the city of Roskilde (located approximately 25 km west of Copenhagen). The research examines the connection between this choice of residence and the everyday lives of the families, including why this form of residence ‐ the commune ‐ is attractive to them. What kinds of needs do the families have and how can the new residence fulfil these needs? This article examines these questions, first, by outlining a theoretical discussion of how to capture the connection between everyday life and residence. Here concepts such as “sense of place”, “the social construction and use of place”, “meaningful places”, and how place experiences play a central role are examined. Second, the article presents findings from an empirical study examining families’ choice of Trekroner and the commune Absalons Have.