Environmentalism In The United States

A fresh look at the history of environmentalism in the United States, challenging current thinking and presenting an innovative perspective.

This book offers a fresh and innovative account of the history of environmentalism in the United States, challenging the dominant narrative in the field. In the widely-held version of events, the US environmental movement was born with the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962 and was driven by the increased leisure and wealth of an educated middle class. Chad Montrie's telling moves the origins of environmentalism much further back in time and attributes the growth of environmental awareness to working people and their families. From the antebellum era to the end of the twentieth century, ordinary Americans have been at the forefront of organizing to save themselves and their communities from environmental harm. This interpretation is nothing short of a substantial recasting of the past, giving a more accurate picture of what happened, when, and why at the beginnings of the environmental movement.

Environmentalism – defined here as activism aimed at protecting the environment or improving its condition – is undergoing significant change in the United States. Under attack from the current administration and direct questioning from its own ranks, environmentalism in the US is at a crossroads. This special issue will explore the changing patterns of and challenges to environmentalism in the contemporary US. More specifically, it will examine the following dynamics: · the re-conceptualisation of core ideas and strategies defining US environmentalism; · questions of identity and relations with other advocacy groups (including labour, global justice and women’s groups); · institutional change (especially the shift away from regulatory policies and approaches); · the expanding arenas of activism, to both above and below the state; · environmentalists’ response to Bush administration policies and priorities. This book was previously published as a special issue of Environmental Politics.

The first balanced look at the evolution and significance of environmentalism, THE GREENING OF A NATION demonstrates the many attitudes Americans have held toward nature, as well as how these attitudes have created the social and cultural concerns of the post-1945 era. The text synthesizes the many facets of environmentalism in an even-handed manner, showing both the triumphs and shortcomings of the concept.

Social movements take shape in relation to the kind of state they face, while over time states are transformed by the movements that they both incorporate and resist. Green States and Social Movements is a comparative study of the environmental movement's successes and failures in four very different states: the USA, UK, Germany and Norway. The history covers the entire sweep of the modern environmental era that begins in 1970. The end in view is a green transformation of the state and society on a par with earlier transformations that gave us first the liberal capitalist state and then the welfare state. The authors explain why such a transformation is now most likely in Germany, and why it is least likely in the United States, which has lost the status of environmental pioneer that it gained in the early 1970s. Their comparative analysis also explains the role played by social movements in making modern societies more deeply democratic, and yields insights into the strategic choices of environmental movements as they decide on what terms to engage, enter or resist the state. Sometimes it makes sense for a movement to act conventionally, as a green party or set of interest groups. But sometimes inclusion can mean co-optation, in which case a movement can instead emphasize action in and through civil society.

In an innovative fusion of labor and environmental history, Making a Living examines work as a central part of Americans' evolving relationship with nature, revealing the unexpected connections between the fight for workers' rights and the rise of

Islamic Environmentalism examines Muslim involvement in environmentalism in the United States and Great Britain. The book focuses upon Muslim activists and Islamic organizations that approach environmentalism as a religious duty: offering environmental readings of Islamic scriptures, and integrating religious ritual and practice with environmental action. Honing in on the insights of social movement theory, Hancock predominantly examines the activism and experience of Muslims involved in environmentalism and bases her research on interviews with activists in the United States and Great Britain. Indeed, the reader is first provided with an insightful analysis of the ways in which Muslim activists interpret and present environmentalism—diagnosing causes of environmental crises, proposing solutions, and motivating other Muslims into activism. This is followed by a discussion of the importance of affective ties, emotion and group culture in motivating and sustaining Muslim involvement in environmental activism. A timely volume which draws attention to the synthesis of political activism and religious practice amongst Muslim environmentalists, this book will be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Islamic Studies, Sociology of Religion, Social Movement Theory and Environmental Studies.

The violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, oil spills, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place gradually and often invisibly. Using the innovative concept of "slow violence" to describe these threats, Rob Nixon focuses on the inattention we have paid to the attritional lethality of many environmental crises, in contrast with the sensational, spectacle-driven messaging that impels public activism today. Slow violence, because it is so readily ignored by a hard-charging capitalism, exacerbates the vulnerability of ecosystems and of people who are poor, disempowered, and often involuntarily displaced, while fueling social conflicts that arise from desperation as life-sustaining conditions erode. In a book of extraordinary scope, Nixon examines a cluster of writer-activists affiliated with the environmentalism of the poor in the global South. By approaching environmental justice literature from this transnational perspective, he exposes the limitations of the national and local frames that dominate environmental writing. And by skillfully illuminating the strategies these writer-activists deploy to give dramatic visibility to environmental emergencies, Nixon invites his readers to engage with some of the most pressing challenges of our time.