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Saving Nature and Seeking JusticeEnvironmental Activists in the Pacific NorthwestWestern Washington University, debrasalazar{at}earthlink.net Critics of the environmental movement point to its narrowness, conventionality, and sectoralism. Analysis of environmentalist discourses offers a means to assess these criticisms. Furthermore, examination of these discourses offers insight into the political ideas that link environmentalists with other progressives and those that divide these sectors. Drawing on a sample of 42 environmental activists in the United States Pacific Northwest, Q methodology is used to reconstruct 4 discourses: civic republican, liberal ecocentric, green justice, and global ecocentric. Analysis of these discourses reveals several key findings. First, issues related to racial and economic justice are the most divisive for environmentalists in the region. Second, the strongest areas of agreement across the discourses relate to the balance of nature and the importance of active, democratic citizenship. Third, the green justice discourse reflects the perspectives of activists from all sectors of the region's environmental movement, suggesting an absence of sectoralism and the existence of intramovement learning.
Key Words: environmentalist discourses • environmental movement • environmental justice • Q methodology • social movements
This version was published on June
1, 2009 Organization & Environment, Vol. 22, No. 2,
230-254 (2009) |
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