Abstract
The strengths and limitations of the modern environmental movement are assessed, using a contextual analysis, with a framework drawn from pragmatic analysis. Empirical summaries from recent policy-making supported by the movement: in community-based recycling, local toxic waste movements, and water pollution control document the fact that the movement has indeed developed some “sustainable resistance” in policy-making in the U.S. and at the Rio Conference. But it has also ignored those consequences of “environmental protection” which degrade the living conditions for many people of color and other low-income groups. The movement's failure to form enduring coalitions for linking environmental protection to social justice limits the movement's power, by permitting disempowered groups to be mobilized in opposition to environmental protection. We outline an alternative strategy, built around “sustainable legitimacy”, which will require changes in the composition and program of environmental movement organizations.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adler, J. & Hager, M. (1992). Earth at the summit.Newsweek, June 1, 20–22.
Anderson, C. (1990).Pragmatic Liberalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ayres, R. U. (1989). Industrial metabolism and global change: Reconciling the sociosphere and the biosphere — global change, industrial metabolism, sustainable development, vulnerability.International Social Science Journal 41(3), 363–374.
Bachrach, P. & Baratz, M. (1962). The two faces of power.American Political Science Review 56, 947–952.
—— (1963). Decisions and nondecisions: An analytic framework.American Political Science Review 57, 632–642.
—— (1973).Power and Poverty: Theory and Practice. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bailey, A. (1991). Letter from the Netherlands.The New Yorker, August 12, 52–65.
Barlett, D. & Steele, J. B. (1992).America: What Went Wrong? Kansas City: Andrews & McNeel.
Begley, S. (1992). Is it apocalypse now?Newsweek, June 1, 36–42.
Betz, C. (1992). Call to Detroit Summer '92. Letter.Greens Clearinghouse, May 1.
Bidwai, P. (1992). North vs. South on pollution.The Nation, June 22, 853–854.
Bluestone, B. & Harrison, B. (1982).The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry. New York: Basic Books.
Blumberg, P. (1980).Inequality in an Age of Decline. New York: Oxford University Press.
Brown, P. & Mikkelson, E. J. (1990).Toxic Waste, Leukemia, and Community Action. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Brundtland, G. H. (1989). The test of our civilization.New Perspectives Quarterly, 6(1).
Bryant, B. & Mohai, P., (Eds.). (1992)Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards: A Time for Discourse. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Burkro, C. E. (1991a). From coercion to cooperation.Chicago Tribune, Ecology-Special Report 1991, November 17, 6–8.
Bullard, R. D. (1990).Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Bullard, R. D., editor. (1993).Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Crossroads. Boston, MA: South End Press.
Bunker, S. G. (1985).Underdeveloping the Amazon: Extraction, Unequal Exchange, and the Failure of the Modern State. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Burke, W. K. (1992). More hot air: U.S. chokes up Earth Summit emissions talks.In These Times, April 22–28, 12–13.
Burton, D. J. (1986). Contradictions and changes in labour response to distributional implications of environmental-resource policies. Pp. 287–314 in A. Schnaiberg, N. Watts, and K. Zimmermann (eds.),Distributional Conflicts in Environmental-Resource Policy. Aldershot, England: Gower Publishing.
Buttel, F. H. (1985). Environmental quality and the state: Some political-sociological observations on environmental regulation. Pp. 167–188 in R. G. Braungart and M. M. Braungart (eds.),Research in Political Sociology. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
—— (1986). Economic stagnation, scarcity, and changing commitments to distributional policies in environmental-resource issues. Pp. 221–238 in A. Schnaiberg, N. Watts, and K. Zimmermann (eds.),Distributional Conflicts in Environmental-Resource Policy. Aldershot, England: Gower Publishing.
Canan, P. (1992). SLAPPS: democratic rights and professional risks.ASA Footnotes, August, 4.
Catton, W. R., Jr. (1980).Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Chambers, R. (1986). Sustainable livelihoods. Institute for Development Studies, University of Sussex, mimeo.
Claybrook, J. (1984).Retreat from Safety: Reagan's Attack on American Health. New York: Pantheon Books.
Court, T. de la (1990).Beyond Brundtland: Green Development in the 1990s. London: Zed Books.
Crowfoot, J. E. & Wondolleck, J. M. (1991).Environmental Disputes: Community Involvement in Conflict Resolution. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Davis, D. E. (1991). Uncommon futures: The rhetoric and reality of sustainable development.Environment, Technology & Society, no. 63, 2–4.
Dewey, J. (1922).Human Nature and Conduct. New York: Random House.
—— (1927).The Public and Its Problems. New York: Holt.
—— (1939).Theory and Valuation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dietz, T. & Rycroft, R. W. (1984). The Washington danger establishment. Paper presented at annual meetings of American Sociological Association. San Antonio.
—— (1987).The Risk Professionals. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Dietz, T., Regens, J. & Rycroft, R. W. (1986). Sources of support for risk assessment and benefit-cost analysis in the environmental policy system. Paper presented at annual meetings of the International Association for Impact Assessment.
Devall B. (1980). The deep ecology movement.Natural Resources Journal 20 (April), 299–322.
Dowie, M. (1992). The new face of environmentalism: As big environmental organizations dodder, the movement's energy shifts to the grass roots.”Utne Reader, July/August: 104–111.
Dunlap, R. E. (1987). Polls, pollution and politics revisited: Public opinion on the environment in the Reagan era.Environment 29 (6), 7–11, 32–37.
Dunlap R. E. & Mertig, A. G., (Eds.). (1992).American Environmentalism: The U.S. Environmental Movement, 1970–1990. Washington, DC: Crane Russak.
During, A. B. (1989).Action at the Grassroots: Fighting Poverty and Environmental Decline. Worldwatch Paper No. 88. Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute.
Easterbrook, G. (1992). A house of cards.Newsweek, June 1, 24–33.
Evernden, N. (1985).The Natural Alien. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Falkenmark, M. (1990). Global water issues confronting humanity.Journal of Peace Research 27(2), 177–190.
Farvar, M. & Glaeser, B. (1979).Politics of Ecodevelopment. Berlin: International Institute for Environment and Society. Wissenschaftzentrum-Berlin.
Frahm, A. M. & Buttel, F. (1982). Appropriate technology.Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 11 11–37.
Galbraith, J. K. (1992).The Culture of Contentment. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Glaeser, B. (1984).Ecodevelopment: Concepts, Projects, Strategies. Oxford, England: Pergamon Press.
Goldman, B. A. (1992). Alternative summit echoes U.N. conference's problems.In These Times, June 24–July 7, 10–11.
Gore, Senator A. (1992).Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Gould, K. A. (1991a). The sweet smell of money: Economic dependency and local environmental political mobilization.Society and Natural Resources 4, 133–150.
-- (1991b).Money, Management, and Manipulation. Environmental Mobilization in the Great Lakes, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of Sociology, Northwestern University, June.
—— (1992a) Putting the [W]R.A.P.s on public participation: Remedial action planning and working-class power in the Great Lakes.Sociological Practice Review 3(3): 133–139.
-- (1992b). Doing as little as politics will allow: Great Lakes pollution sites and the limits of local pollution control. Paper presented at the North American Symposium on Society and Resource Management, Madison, WI, May.
-- (1992c). Legitimating growth: The role of the state in environmental remediation. Paper presented at annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, Pittsburgh, August.
Gould, K. A. & Weinberg A. S. (1991). Who mobilizes whom? The role of national and regional social movement organizations in local environmental political mobilization. Paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, Cincinnati, OH, August.
Groves, R. H. (1992). Origins of western environmentalism.Scientific American, July: 42–47.
Gunn, G. (1989). Authority and its distractions.Yale Review 78 (Spring), 119–127.
—— (1992).Thinking Across the American Grain: Ideology, Intellect, and the New Pragmatism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hadden, S. G. (1989).A Citizen's Right To Know. Westview Press: Boulder, Co.
Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons.Science 162 (13 December), 1243–1248.
Hawkins, K. (1984).Environment and Enforcement: Regulation and the Social Definition of Pollution. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hays, S. P. (1969).Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890–1920. New York: Atheneum Books.
—— (1985). From conservation to environment. In Kendall E. Bailes (ed.),Environmental History. New York: University of America Press.
Hecht, S. & Cockburn, A. (1992). Rhetoric and reality in Rio.The Nation, June 22, 848–853.
Illich, I. (1989). The shadow our future throws.New Perspectives Quarterly, 6(1).
Inglehart, R. (1977).The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles among Western Publics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
—— (1990).Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
James, W. (1907).Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. New York: Longmans Green.
Johnson, B. B. (1991). An Underused Resource. Division of Science and Research. New Jersey, Department of Environmental Protection and Energy.
Krauss, C. (1992). Women and toxic waste protests: race, class and gender as resources of resistance. Paper presented at annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, Pittsburgh, August.
Krupp, F. D. (1986). The third stage of environmentalism.EDF Letter XVII (August), 4.
Lake, L. (1982).Environmental Regulation: The Political Effects of Implementation. New York: Praeger.
Landy, M. K., Roberts, M. J., & Thomas, S. R. (1990).The Environmental Protection Agency: Asking the Wrong Questions. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lash, J., Gillman, K., & Sheridan, D. (1984).A Season of Spoils: The Story of the Reagan Administration's Attack on the Environment. New York: Pantheon Books.
Leavitt, N. N. (1992). Environmentalists shift focus to inner city.Ann Arbor News, February 18.
Linn, N. & Vining, J. (1992). Attitudes toward recycling issues and willingness to spend tax money. Paper presented at the 4th North American Symposium on Society and Resource Management. Madison, WI, May.
Little, P. (1992). The Rio summit falls to earth as U.S. snubs global treaties.In These Times, June 24-July 7, 8–9.
Lowe, P. D. & Goyde, J. (1983).Environmental Groups in Politics. London: Allen and Unwin.
Lowe, P. D. & Rudig, W. (1987). Political ecology and the social sciences—the state of the art.British Journal of Political Science 16, 513–550.
Lowi, T. (1964). American business, public policy, case-studies, and political theory.World Politics 16 (4), 677–715.
—— (1972). Four systems of policy, politics, and choice.Public Administration Review 32 (4), 298–310.
—— (1979). The End of Liberalism. 2nd edition. New York: W. W. Norton.
—— (1986). The welfare state, the new regulation, and the rule of law. Pp. 109–149 in A. Schnaiberg, N. Watts, and K. Zimmermann (eds.),Distributional Conflicts in Environmental-Resource Policy. Aldershot, England: Gower Publishing.
McLaughlin, A. (1993).Regarding Nature. Industrialism and Deep Ecology. Ithaca, NY: State University of New York Press.
Mazmanian, D. & Sabatier, P. (1981).Effective Policy Implementation. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
Merton, R. K. (1957). Social structure and anomie. Chapter IV in hisSocial Theory and Social Structure. Revised and enlarged edition. New York: Free Press.
Milbrath, L. W. (1984).Environmentalists: Vanguard for a New Society. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press.
—— (1992).Envisioning a Sustainable Society: Learning Our Way Out. Ithaca, NY: State University of New York Press.
Mitchell, R. C. (1980). How ‘soft’, ‘deep’, or ‘left’? Present constituencies in the environmental movement.Natural Resources Journal 20 (April), 345–358.
Morris, D. (1992). The four stages of environmentalism.Utne Reader, March/April, 157, 159.
Morrison, D. (1977). Growth, environment, equity and scarcity.Social Science Quarterly 57 (2), 292–306.
—— (1980). The soft, cutting edge of environmentalism: Why and how the appropriate technology notion is changing the movement.Natural Resources Journal 20 (April), 275–298.
—— (1986). How and why environmental consciousness has trickled down. Pp. 187–220 in A. Schnaiberg, N. Watts, and K. Zimmermann (eds.),Distributional Conflicts in Environmental-Resource Policy. Aldershot, England: Gower Publishing.
Mills, C. W. (1959).The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.
Murphy, K. (1992),Knowledge is Power: The U.S. Right To Know Act. Bulletin of Pollution Prevention. Newsletter of Great Lakes United. Spring 1992.
Needleman, J. (1991).Money and the Meaning of Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Newhouse, J. (1992). The diplomatic round: Earth summit.The New Yorker:, June 1, 64–78.
O'Connor, J. (1973).The Fiscal Crisis of the State. New York: St. Martin's Press.
—— (1988). Capitalism, nature, socialism: A theoretical introduction.Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 1 (Fall), 11–38.
Ophuls, W. (1977).Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity: Prologue to a Political Theory of the Steady State. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
Petersen, W. (1975). Malthusian theory and its development. Chapter 5 in hisPopulation. Third edition. New York: Macmillan.
Phillips, K. (1989).The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath. New York: Random House.
—— (1993).Boiling Point: Democrats, Republicans, and the Decline of Middle-Class Prosperity. New York: Random House.
Ramade, F. (1989). Ecological Catastrophes.Futuribles 1, 63–78.
Redclift, M. (1984).Development and the Environmental Crisis: Red or Green Alternatives? New York: Methuen.
—— (1987).Sustainable Development: Exploring the Contradictions. New York: Methuen.
Reich, R. B. (1991).The Wealth of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Rohrschneider, R. (1991). Public opinion toward environmental groups in western Europe: One movement or two?Social Science Quarterly 72, 251–266.
Rorty, R. (1982).Consequences of Pragmatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
—— (1989).Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rosenbaum, W. A. (1973).The Politics of Environmental Concern. New York: Praeger.
Sachs, W. (1989). The virtue of enoughness.New Perspectives Quarterly 6, no. 1.
Schnaiberg, A. (1975). Social syntheses of the societal-environmental dialectic: The role of distributional impacts.Social Science Quarterly 56 (June), 5–20.
—— (1977). Obstacles to environmental research by scientists and technologists: A social structural analysis.Social Problems 24 (5), 500–520.
—— (1980).The Environment: From Surplus to Scarcity. New York: Oxford University Press.
—— (1982). Did you ever meet a payroll? Contradictions in the appropriate technology movement.Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 9 (2), Spring-Summer, 38–62.
—— (1983a). Redistributive goals versus distributive politics: Social equity limits in environmental and appropriate technology movements.Sociological Inquiry 53 (2/3), Spring, 200–219.
—— (1983b).Saving the environment: From whom, for whom, and by whom? Preprint, International Institute for Environment and Society, Wissenschaftszentrum-Berlin.
—— (1983c). Soft energy and hard labor? Structural restraints on the transition to appropriate technology. Pp. 217–234 in Gene F. Summers (ed.),Technology and Social Change in Rural Area. Boulder: Westview Press.
—— (1985). Gas today or food tomorrow? Social choices and energy policies.Progress, Museum of Science and Industry 36 (5), September-October, 10–15.
—— (1986a). The role of experts and mediators in the channeling of distributional conflicts. Pp. 348–362 in A. Schnaiberg, N. Watts, and K. Zimmermann (eds.),Distributional Conflicts in Environmental-Resource Policy. Aldershot, England: Gower Publishing.
—— (1986b). Future trajectories of resource distributional conflicts: Trends and projections. Pp. 435–444 in A. Schnaiberg, N. Watts, and K. Zimmermann (eds.),Distributional Conflicts in Environmental-Resource Policy. Aldershot, England: Gower Publishing.
-- (1990a). New w(h)ine in old bottles: Recycling the politics of recycling. Paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, Washington, DC, August.
—— (1990b). Recycling and redistribution: Progressive or regressive? Paper presented at the Midwest Radical Scholars Conference, Loyola University, Chicago, October.
-- (1991). The political economy of consumption: Ecological policy limits. Paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington DC., February.
-- (1992a).Recycling vs. remanufacturing: Redistributive realities. Working paper WP 92-15. Center for Urban Affairs & Policy Research, Northwestern University, Spring.
-- (1992b).The recycling shell game. Multinational economic organization vs. local political ineffectuality. Working paper WP-92-16, Center for Urban Affairs & Policy Research, Northwestern University, Spring.
—— (1992c). Oppositions.Science 255 (20 March): 1586–1587.
Schnaiberg, A. & Gould, K. A. (1994).Environment and Society: The Enduring Conflict. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Schnaiberg, A., Watts, N. & Zimmermann, K. editors. (1986).Distributional Conflicts in Environmental-Resource Policy. Aldershot, England: Gower Publishing.
Schor, J. (1991).The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure. New York: Basic Books.
Schumacher, E. F. (1973).Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. New York: Harper & Row.
Shabecoff, P. (1992).A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement. New York: Hill and Wang.
Shapere, D. (1984).Reason and the Search for Knowledge. Boston: Reidel.
Shiva, V. (1989).Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development. London: Zed Books.
Short, J. F. Jr. (1984). The social fabric at risk.American Sociological Review 49, 711–25.
Smith, E. T. (1992). Growth vs. environment: In Rio next month, a push for sustainable development.Business Week, May 11, 66–75.
Spector, M. & Kitsuse, J. I. (1977).Constructing Social Problems. Menlo Park, CA: Cummings Publishing Company.
Staggenborg, S. (1991).The Pro-Choice Movement: Organization and Activism in the Abortion Conflict. New York: Oxford University Press.
—— (1986). Coalition work in the pro-choice movement: Organizational and environmental opportunities and obstacles.Social Problems 33, 374–390.
—— (1989). Organizational and environmental influences on the development of the prochoice movement.Social Forces 68 (1), 204–240.
Stonich, S. (1990). The dynamics of social processes and environmental destruction: A Central American case study.Population and Development Review 15(2), 269–296.
Stretton, H. (1976).Capitalism, Socialism, and the Environment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Suro, R. (1993). Pollution-weary minorities try civil rights tack.New York Times, January 11.
Tober, J. A. (1981).Who Owns the Wildlife? The Political Economy of Conservation in Nineteenth Century America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
United States Public Information Research Group [USPIRG] (1989–1992).Working Notes on Community Right-to-Know. Washington, DC: USPIRG.
van Vliet, W. (1990). Human settlements in the U.S.: Questions of even and sustainable development. Paper presented at colloquium onHuman Settlements and Sustainable Development, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, June.
Vaahtorantz, T. (1990). Atmospheric pollution as a global policy problem.Journal of Peace Research. 27: 2 169–76.
Wad, A., Lavengood, T. & Scallon, M. (1991). International cooperation for environmentally sustainable industrial development (ESID). Draft paper, Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Science and Technology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, May.
Walljasper, J. (1992). The anti-green backlash: The media have forgotten environmental issues, but has the American public?Utne Reader March/April, 158–159.
Webster, D. (1992). Sweet home Arkansas: In Bill Clinton's backyard, a determined band of down-home activists proves the power of Green politics.Utne Reader July/August, 112–116.
Weinberg, A. S. (1991). Community Right To Know and the environment. Paper presented at the American Sociological Association Meetings. Cincinnati, Ohio, August.
-- (1992a). Defining the success of a social movement. Paper presented at the Midwest Sociological Association Meetings, Kansas City, April.
-- (1992b). Where is the community in Community Right To Know? Paper presented at the North American Symposium on Society and Resource Management, Madison, WI. May.
-- (1993). Sociological narratives: The case for a pragmatic study of environmental movements. Paper presented at the meetings of the American Sociological Association, Miami Beach, FL.
World Commission on Enviroment & Development (1987).Our Common Future. Oxford University Press.
Worster, D. (1973).American Environmentalism: The Formative Period, 1860-1915. New York: Wiley.
Yeager, P. C. (1991).The Limits of Law: The Public Regulation of Private Pollution. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.
Zald, M. N. & McCarthy, J. D. (1980). Social movement industries: Competition and cooperation among movement organizations.Research in Social Movements, Conflicts, and Change 3, 1–20.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gould, K.A., Weinberg, A.S. & Schnaiberg, A. Legitimating impotence: Pyrrhic victories of the modern environmental movement. Qual Sociol 16, 207–246 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00990100
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00990100