TRANSNATIONAL VERSUS GLOBAL AND LOCAL PERSPECTIVES

In this volume, we outline the driving logic and contradictions of modern industrial production as it constrains and shapes the ability of the environmental movement to protect ecosystems. We ask how and why community-based frameworks for environmental issues have evolved. In addition, we explore the way in which these frameworks could be expanded to empower a broader social–environmental coalition. We believe that this can occur only if the tensions within the political economy of modern production are made more overt to citizen-workers, analysts, and policy makers, instead of being politically and economically trivialized. Thus, the focus of our study is on local community organizing, but our intent is to demonstrate the importance of the changing political economy.

Broadly, the growth of the environmental movement in the 1980s occurred along three different trajectories, each of which had its own constituencies, issues, and ideologies. One branch of the movement consisted of old-line conservationists and preservationists. These groups tended to congregate in and around the Nature Conservancy, the Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, and other traditional movement organizations. They also existed locally in education centers and land conservancies. This branch of the movement appealed mainly to older, more highly educated and wealthier Americans concerned with preserving ecosystem elements for the aesthestic and recreational enjoyment of future generations. It has been appropriately captured by the label “the cult of the wilderness.”