Global ChangeIntersection of Nature and Culture

Can’t we all just get along?

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

If you’re an environmentalist, the answer is apparently “no” and for an interesting reason suggested in a recent paper^1,2 by Clare Saunders in the British Journal of Sociology (subscription required).

She suggests that the social movements like environmentalism are comprised of many different organizations, each fostering a collective identity that is often incompatible with other organizations in the same movement.  Ordinarily, we think of the overall movement goals as having a binding effect among these subgroups.  Apparently not.  People are forming identities with other individuals cut from the same ideological cloth rather than the identity of the social movement itself.

This may not be surprising given the radically different approaches of groups like Earth First, Sierra Club, the Apollo Alliance, 350.org, and Shellenberger and Nordhaus.  It’s also apparent with all of the lines drawn in the sand regarding

• cap and trade vs. carbon tax and dividend (make carbon expensive)
• either of the above approaches vs. subsidizing and making renewable energy cheap (Shellenberger and Nordhaus)
• strict and immediate reduction (350.org) vs. slower emissions reduction trajectories

The bad news is that this kind of animosity can be paralyzing to the social movement, leading to little being accomplished, especially when polarizing debate turns off the public.

Some excerpts:

• Given that different organizations within a movement cannot and need not share a collective identity, it then becomes possible to conceive of collective identity as something with the potential to lead to hostility between groups that are each competing to have their own views universally accepted.
• Unlike in radical environmentalism and to a lesser extent in reform environmentalism, it is possible to be a conservationist without developing an ideology that involves becoming immersed in movement culture. The cognitive praxis of conservationists is highly biased towards conservation issues, rather than broader environmentalism. In contrast, reform and radical environmentalism have more encompassing movement organization identities, require an attribution of the source of a problem and the choosing of a course of action based on opportunities and constraints, and are more often called upon to defend their beliefs to adversaries and mainstream culture.
• The existence of organizations within a movement that have strong solidarity presents a challenge to the wider movement in terms of communication, mutual understanding and tolerance of alternative strategies. It is an aim for both more and less solidary groups to avoid sectarian animosity as it could reduce the flexibility of the movement, mislead the public over strategies, make campaigns less effective, spread misunderstandings about other organizations and create unnecessary tensions.
• We should therefore challenge the assumption that collective identity
  always has a binding effect on movements. To the contrary, it has the potential to dangerously factionalize movements. A similar conflict dynamic between radical and reformist SMOs has been reported to occur in other social movements The process of creating ‘sectarian solidarity’ via the formation of encompassing collective identities could be a convincing explanation of its cause.

¹Saunders, C. (2008) Double-edged swords? Collective identity and solidarity in the environment movement. The British Journal of Sociology 59(2):227-253.

²Bowdoin people can link to the article here.

Posted in: behavior, environmentalism, social movements, social science | 2 Comments »

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