Explaining The Transformation of Environmental Activism: An evaluation of the Explanatory Potential of the Political and Identity Oriented Approaches.

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Explaining The Transformation of Environmental Activism: An evaluation of the Explanatory Potential of the Political and Identity Oriented Approaches

Where mobilisation is concerned, looking at Protest Event Data, one can see a clear pattern emerging in the number of environmental protests: an increase from 60 to 100/year from 1988 to 80, decreasing steadily to just over 60 in 1991, increasing to a peak of around 160 in 1995, and tailing off dramatically to around 60 per year in 1997 During this period, roads as an issue show the most dramatic increase, and confrontational increases remarkably. The other remarkable statistic that needs explaining is that of the decreasing significance of the demonstration in terms of median numbers of members and gross numbers of protests. (Roots 2000, p9)

As far as environmental movement organisations are concerned, the trend has been for previously radical groups to become more institutionalised, in terms of membership base, paid staff and turnover. More recently, there has also been the emergence of more radical disorganisations. The archetypal group here is Earth First,  founded in the nearby town of Hastings in the spring of 1991, with an even more recent example being Reclaim the Streets (Q: Why Hastings??? The south east is hardly a hot-bed of counter-cultural radicalism!!!) instrumental in Various road protests, as well as RTS and TLIO.

 

An attempt to explain the above trends through a very systematic and detailed application of poltical opportunity tools is made by Rootes, who offers as an explanation of the TEA and the emergence of the anti-roads movements the following:

  1. the commitment to development of roads by the then conservative government (assumably, without an issue to protest about, there will be no protest?)
  2. The legitimisation of environmental issues by Margaret Thatcher in various high profile speeches
  3. The ensuing increase in media reporting of environmental issues
  4. The failure of the Green Party in the 1992 elections
  5. The reelection of the conservative government and the renewal of the roads building programme
  6. The closure of the political system to any chance of pro-environmental policy being implemented
  7. The example of the success of the poll tax, which was especially appealing to the young (Wall 99)

This can be explained by political conjuncture of the following

  1. Raising of expectations of the government in the late 80s that it then failed to meet
  2. The lack of a possibility to register an effective green protest vote in the 1992 elections
  3. The CJA campaign extended the networks of activists
  4. Shell providing an opportunity to protest
  5. Animal welfare activists stepping up thie thing

All of this leads to normally conservative people being pushed into the arms of the more radoial minded

"Protest mobilisations in modern Britain have thus far operated as useful safety valves for the existing system rather than as widening pools of rejection of it or reservoirs for future attempts at the radical transformation of it" (Roots, 2000, p15)

Rootes makes the generalisation that the poll-tax campaign, Alarm UK and CND seek to mobilise supporters around single issues and seek to downplay their distinctive political agenda in order to appeal to a mass constituency. (Rootes, 2000, 16)

This suggests that people in Britain are not concerned with the unrepresentative nature of the political opportunity structure in the United Kingdom, and seek to work within it, this is certainly true of groups such as Greenpeace and FoE in recent years.

What he does state is different is the emergence of Spontaneous Road Protests, interview data here suggesting that individuals engage in such activities because of an ideological rejection of an unrepresentative liberal democracy, the same reason why they do not vote, but he again offers the political explanation stating that they also engage in action because of "their use of direct action was useful in campaigns because the actions of direct activists enabled mainstream organisations to look very moderate by comparison and so increased their leverage" (Rootes 2000, 15) It follows that even if such emergent aspects the environmental movement cannot be explained by the political opportunity structure then the actions of activists are at least partly informed by it

Moving beyond resource mobilisation explanations, Tarrow points out that post-material factors alone, while useful in explaining the rise of new social movements at a very high level of generalisation, in that personal affluence allows people to think beyond material concern are not enough as to explain why some countries in the 1960s experienced more contention than others. The question that he sets himself is  one of how underlying structure and mobilisation potential are transformed into action.

(p72)

More broadly, in Power in Movement, Tarrow states that the goal of his work is to locate the social movement within the universe of contention, defining the social movement as those "sequences of contentious politics that are based on underlying networks and resonant collective action frames, and which develop the capacity to maintain sustained collective action frames against powerful opponents" (Tarrow, 1997,2)

His main contention is that we need a broad framework of analysis that relates more contemporary social movements to contentious politics and to politics in general, and to do this, he tries to relate them to cycles of contention, holding that "contention is more closely related to opportunities for - and limited by constraints upon - collective action than by the persistent social or economic factors that people experience" (Tarrow, 1997, p4)

Tarrow points to five dimensions of the political opportunity structure that explain this transformation:

  1. Opening of access. Such as when the peace, students and women's movement took advantage of this in America in the late 60s (77)
  2. Evidence of political realignment weakening of the democrats forced them to listen to african americans (78)
  3. Appearance of influential allies Gamson (1990) shows correlations for this in th U.S. between success and allies, and European green parties are more applicable to "life-space movements"
  4. Emerging splits within the elite
  5. A decline in the state's capacity to repress dissent.

Are three main types of contention: violence, conventional and unconventional!!!

Performance, in our century where third parties and the media are crucial in determining movement outcomes, is of crucial importance in understanding protest and contention (94)

He explains the lack of violence due to it having a polarising effect, which can isolate sympathisers, and splits movements, such as the SDS and The Weathermen. It can emerge when there are no other channels. (94-6)

The second form of contention is that of disruption, which is periodic as sustaining disruption depends on a high level of commitment, and this is hard to maintain in the long run and it  can be ineffective as police adapt and elites remain firm

Sustaining disruption also means that less committed members slip back into private lives, and it splits the movement into conventional majorities and militant minorities (96-99) and it is for this reason that "protest demonstration has become the major nonelectoral expression of civil politics" (100) This is cos of low commitment and low risk, and is easy to manage and organise, has become legalised in constitutionalised states. Eventually, however, this leads to the institutionalisation of contention

"As disruption and excitement give way, movements realise the advantages of conventional forms of protest, they gain access and more members"

The process is thus one where Innovation occurs at the margins, such as skeleton suits etc, can enliven or become something new, with tactical interaction proceeding  in a dialectical fashion, and thus moments of madness , peaks in cycles of protest lead to paradigmatic change: rigid to modular in the 18th, strike and demo in the 19th, and NVDA in the 20th (103), until in its present form, the modern social movement is multiform, it is flexible, combining the expressive, the instrumental. The confrontational and the violent and the conventional…

Looking at the movement as a whole then, Tarrow explains the long term cycles of disruptive tactics through firslty the Political Opportunity Structure, and secondly the need for members to maintain a broad public appeal. Thus movements as a whole adapt their strategies in order to generate the most sympathy for their cause, and to ensure that they will remain efficacious in the political sphere. The disruptive is something at occurs at the peak of movement cycles, and is rather unusual and almost appears as irrational in this account.

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Frame alignment has four processes:

  1. Bridging
  2. Amplification
  3. Extension
  4. Formation

The goal is to not be too close to the dominant, but not to be too far!!!

 ME: AT LEAST THIS IS POLTICAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE!!! THESE FRAMES ARE DONE TO MOBILISES SUPPORT

Emotionality and Injustice are used to mobilise actors to collective action

Me: this whole thing implies adaptation, selective interpretation in order to achieve consensus and solidarity in the eyes of a common enemy Is this right???

P116: The media tend to focus on the militant, no the peaceful.

Thus, ...

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