From opposition to coop(era)tion

As I suggested in chapter 1, it is possible to place the different strategies, or approaches, in the world of environmental politics along a continuum between two poles, or opposing “cultural formations”. On the one hand there is the dominant formation of green business, or commerce, which seeks to divert environmentalism into profit-making directions, integrating the quest for sustainable development into processes of global corporate expansion. On the other hand there are the various “residual formations” of ecological resistance, or critical ecology, which tend to draw environmental struggles into all sorts of political and social campaigns: for justice and equity, community and consumer empowerment, as well as for cultural survival and local resistance to the various effects and repercussions of globalization.