Global Visions: Global Civil Society and the Lessons of European Environmentalism

To illuminate the obstacles to the development of a global civil society, the experience of the most developed transnational social movement—the environmental movement—in the most developed supranational political system—the European Union—is considered. National differences are shown to be persistent and there is little evidence of Europeanization. It is argued that the impediments to the development of a global civil society are yet greater and that, despite the advent of antiglobalization protests, global civil society remains an aspiration rather thanan accomplished fact     

生态学马克思主义对西方环境主义的批判和启示

西方环境主义认为人类在地球上的频繁活动将导致地球整个生态系统的破坏，要想解决环境问题就必须限制人类活动，缩小经济发展规模，避免人口过剩；而生态学马克思主义则指出，生态危机产生的根源是由于资本主义私有制的存在，环境污染和人口过剩是资本主义剥削自然和剥削人类的结果，只有建立生态社会主义社会，绿色环境主义者和马克思主义者的可持续发展理想才能实现。     

Working-class ecology and union politics: a conceptual topology

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that Environmental Labour Studies may benefit from incorporating the perspective of environmental justice. We offer a theorization of working-class ecology as the place where working-class communities live and work, being typically affected by environmental injustice, and of working-class environmentalism as those forms of activism that link labour and environmental struggles around the primacy of reproduction. The paper’s theoretical section draws on a social ethnography of working-class ecology in the case of Taranto, a mono-industrial town in southern Italy, which is experiencing a severe environmental and public-health crisis. We show how environmental justice activism since the early 2000s has allowed the re-framing of union politics along new ways of politicizing the local economy. We conclude by offering a conceptual topology of working-class ecology, which situates different labour organizations (confederal, social/community, and rank-and-file unions) according to their positioning in respect to environmental justice.     

Social Network Challenges to Reducing Consumption: The Problem of Gift Giving

Social networks are typically associated with recruitment tactics. In this article, I offer an additional perspective on social networks as a constraint to social change and an under‐recognized challenge to reducing consumption. I draw on 45 interviews with: voluntary simplifiers, religious environmentalists, and green home owners. Informants, failing to withdraw from gift‐giving networks, instead (1) negotiate a reduction in gift giving, (2) green gift giving, and (3) attempt to transform gift giving into a tactic for lifestyle change. Rather than viewing social networks as channels for cultural cohesion, I argue that we need to better conceptualize the way culture and networks are co‐constituted by tactics of influence within areas of contention.     

Accounting for the Performance of Environmentally Significant Behavior: The Symbolic Significance of Recycling

The scientific community has pronounced climate change unequivocal and its consequences disastrous. Yet Americans' behavioral response to the global social problem of environmental degradation has been largely confined to the individual act of recycling. This article examines why Americans are not doing more to address climate change and other environmental issues. Taking a cognitive sociological perspective, I describe how Americans think about environmental issues and pro‐environmental behavior. I draw on Swidler's concept of a “cultural tool kit,” to examine the cultural narratives Americans use to account for the small amount of pro‐environmental behavior they perform. The act of recycling functions as a synecdoche for pro‐environmental behavior in general, allowing individuals to over‐claim the significance of a modest amount of pro‐environmental behavior. I argue that Americans' failure to engage with environmental issues at a collective level is rooted in the individualized culture of American environmentalism.     

美国视觉文化和环境运动的开端

美国的视觉文化已经超越了对国家自然美景和资源的欣赏。从20世纪40年代开始,一些艺术家已经开始表达他们对科技发展正使自然环境陷入困境的担忧,他们的担忧与美学有着复杂的联系。当代许多艺术家都致力于环境恢复工程,努力使已经遭受破坏的生态系统回到平衡的状态。人们对环境破坏的担忧首先表现为对原子弹发明的恐惧,20世纪40年代起,有几位艺术家开始围绕这一危险性进行创作。     

Eco/Feminism on the Edge

In this commentary I extend and converse with Niamh Moore's account of ecofeminist politics at Clayoquot Sound during the 1993 peace camp. In agreeing with her argument that such activist moments are more complex than the charges of maternalism and essentialism that have been thrown at them, I support her genealogical approach to understanding the particular gender relations that unfolded during the protest. In addition, I suggest that an understanding of the wider gender politics of the region, in addition to further consideration of other ecofeminist problematiques, would extend and enrich such analyses of ecofeminist activisms.     

超越物质主义的环境主义

这个世界是否在某种意义上与内在生命相融合?是否就如同主体之于客体,精神之于物质?如果如此,那么我们在这个世界上的基本生存方式将不得不改变:我们将不得不融入现实,而非将自己的设计强加给世界。我们需要找到一种参与的模式,它能让世界以自己的方式存在,同时,这种参与模式能够满足人类的需求,表达我们的创造。协同,就是这样一种与道家“无为”思想一致的参与模式。它不仅针对环境的可持续,而且也是对现代性所造就的社会变革模式或曰“发展”模式的替代。     

Margaret Atwood’s Straddling Environmentalism

Abstract

“Margaret Atwood’s Straddling Environmentalism” asks why Atwood crosses the Canada-US border in her dystopian fiction. It takes Atwood’s 2004 comments that The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) partly grew out of her ‘irritation when people say “it can’t happen here”’ and her claim that she decided to set the novel in Cambridge, Massachusetts as being related to that irritation—’”It can’t happen here,” she explained, “should be placed in the most extreme ‘here”’—as a prompt. Focusing on Oryx and Crake (2003), this article argues that one of Atwood’s motivations for crossing the Canada-US border in this novel is to provoke us to develop what Giovanna Di Chiro has termed ‘a scale-crossing environmental consciousness.’ Oryx and Crake challenges us to think about environmentalism in relation to local, embodied experiences as well as on a global, transnational scale.     

Life Environmentalism: A Model Developed under Environmental Degradation

The life environmentalism model, which emphasizes the lives and livelihoods of local communities, was developed in Japan on the basis of intensive field research in the Lake Biwa district. There were two opposing schools of thought when the model was created in 1984. One school recognized the benefits of untouched nature, relied on ecology as a science and was supported by ecological movements. We label this model natural environmentalism (the eco-system model). The other school of thought maintained that the development of modern technology could resolve environmental problems and was strongly supported by the administrators of the Lake Biwa district. We have called this modern technocentrism. After critiquing both ideas we propose a life environmentalism model, which focuses on matters of ownership, community organization and residents' consciousness using the concepts of common possession, iibun (group views) and life consciousness. The model is effective in densely populated countries such as Japan and China but it may not be useful in areas with a low population density. The differences between the basic ideas of this model and the other two models, especially the eco-system model, may provide hints on suitable ways to preserve the environment.