1,721,118 research outputs found
Acting Locally: the character, contexts and significance of local environmental mobilisations
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Acting Locally: Local Environmental Mobilizations and Campaigns
No full textLocal campaigns are the most persistent and ubiquitous forms of environmental contention. National and transnational mobilisations come and go and the attention they receive from mass media ebbs and flows, but local campaigns persist. The persistence or re-emergence of local campaigns is also a reminder that it remain possible to mobilise people around environmental issues, and they have often served as sources of innovation in and re-invigoration of national organisations that have allegedly been co-opted by the powerful and incorporated into the established political and administrative system.
But local environmental campaigns have been relatively neglected in the scientific literature. Drawing on examples from Britain, France, Greece, Ireland and Italy, this book seeks to redress that neglect by examining the networks among actors and organisations that connect local mobilizations to the larger environmental movement and political systems, the ways in which local disputes are framed in order to connect with national and global issues, and the persistent impacts of the peculiarities of place upon environmental campaigns
Britain
No full textThe evolution of environmental protest in Britain is considered against the background of the development of the environmental movement and the emergence of the environment as a political issue. 1323 protest events reported in The Guardian during the years 1988–97 are analysed to explore the varying incidence, issues, forms and organizational affiliations of protest. In a decade in which environmentalism was widely supposed to have been institutionalized and domesticated, the evidence reveals an extraordinary surge of increasingly confrontational but generally non‐violent protest, especially against roads and for animal rights. In terms of issues, forms, networks, and organizations, animal welfare appears quite distinct from and scarcely linked to the broader environmental movement. The varying incidence and changing character of protest is explained chiefly in terms of changing political opportunities, but also as a legacy of a cycle of protest that began with the campaign against the poll tax
Environmental Protest in Western Europe
No full textIt is frequently claimed that, as a result of the institutionalization of environmentalism in the years following its rapid rise in the 1970s and 1980s, the environmental movement has been demobilized, and that once radical groups have been incorporated into the web of policy‐making and consultation and have moderated their tactics to the point that lobbying and partnerships have displaced protest. Such claims were, however, based on casual observation and anecdote rather than systematic investigation of the incidence of protest, and during the 1990s, in several western European countries, the conventional wisdom was challenged by a resurgence of environmental protest that was sometimes markedly more confrontational than that of the 1980s. To determine whether there had indeed been a decline or deradicalization of protest, protest event analysis was undertaken of the environmental protests reported in one quality newspaper in each of eight countries–Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the Basque Country – during the 10 years 1988–97. No universal or monotonic decline of environmental protests was apparent during the decade, with reported protests declining and becoming less confrontational in some countries, but rising and becoming more confrontational in others. Most reported environmental protest was moderate and nondisruptive throughout the decade, and violent action remained rare. It was expected that opportunities created by the increased environmental competence of the European Union would produce a Europeanization of environmental protest, but there was no evidence of any increase in the proportions of protest mobilized on the level of, stimulated by, or targeted at the European Union and its institutions, all of which remained at very low levels in all of the countries. Nor was there evidence of Europeanization of environmental protest in the shape of convergence of national patterns of the incidence of protest. The patterns of the incidence of protest varied considerably and remained nationally idiosyncratic, with considerable cross‐national variations in the issues and the forms of protest tending to persist over time. Protest event methodology encounters problems of selection bias associated with cycles of media attention, and so, in the attempt better to understand these biases and their impact upon the pattern of reported protest, journalists and editors associated with the production of those reports were interviewed. On the basis of a protest event analysis of newspaper reports during a decade in which environmental protest was no longer novel, this investigation concludes that there is little or no evidence of the demobilization of environmentalism, and some that the institutionalization of environmental activism may be self‐limiting
Conclusion: environmental protest transformed?
No full textDespite the institutionalization of environmentalism, it appears that there was no universal or monotonic decline of environmental protests during the decade 1988–97. Patterns of the incidence of protest varied considerably and remained nationally idiosyncratic, with protest appearing to decline and become less confrontational in Greece, whereas it rose and became more confrontational in Britain, and declined only to revive sharply in Germany, Spain, and Italy. Considerable cross‐national variations in the issues and the forms of protest tended to persist over time. There was no evidence of any Europeanization of environmental protest in the shape of either a convergence of national patterns or a rise of protest mobilized on the level of, stimulated by, or targeted at the European Union and its institutions. On the basis of a protest event analysis of newspaper reports during a decade in which environmental protest was no longer novel, there is little or no evidence of the demobilization of environmentalism during the decade, and some that the institutionalization of environmental activism may be self‐limiting
The "movement of movements" as a "network of networks": the global justice movement and the Make Poverty History march in context
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