Critics of the environmental movement point to its narrowness, conventionality, and sectoralism. Analysis of environmentalist discourses offers a means to assess these criticisms. Furthermore, examination of these discourses offers insight into the political ideas that link environmentalists with other progressives and those that divide these sectors. Drawing on a sample of 42 environmental activists in the United States Pacific Northwest, Q methodology is used to reconstruct 4 discourses: civic republican, liberal ecocentric, green justice, and global ecocentric. Analysis of these discourses reveals several key findings. First, issues related to racial and economic justice are the most divisive for environmentalists in the region. Second, the strongest areas of agreement across the discourses relate to the balance of nature and the importance of active, democratic citizenship. Third, the green justice discourse reflects the perspectives of activists from all sectors of the region's environmental movement, suggesting an absence of sectoralism and the existence of intramovement learning.
Addams, H. (2000). Q Methodology. In H. Addams & J. Proops (Eds.), Social discourse and environmental policy: An application of Q methodology (pp. 14-40). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
2.
Andrews, K., & Edwards, B. (2005). The organizational structure of local environmentalism . Mobilization, 10, 213-234.
3.
Bantjes, R. (1997). Hegemony and the power of constitution: Labour and environmental coalition-building in Maine and Nova Scotia. Studies in Political Economy, 54, 59-90.
4.
Benford, R. (2005). The half-life of the environmental justice frame: Innovation, diffusion, and stagnation. In D. Pellow & R. Brulle (Eds.), Power, justice, and the environment: A critical appraisal of the environmental justice movement (pp. 37-53). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
5.
Brown, S.R. (1980). Political subjectivity: Applications of Q-methodology in political science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
6.
Brown, S.R. (1986). Q technique and method: Principles and procedures . In W. D. Berry & M. S. Lewis-Beck (Eds.), New tools for social scientists: Advances and applications in research methods (pp. 57-75). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
7.
Brulle, R.J. (1996). Environmental discourse and social movement organizations: A historical and rhetorical perspective on the development of U.S. environmental organizations. Sociological Inquiry, 66(1), 58-83.
8.
Brulle, R.J. (2000). Agency, democracy, and nature: The U.S. environmental movement from a critical theory perspective. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
9.
Brulle, R.J., & Jenkins, J.C. (2005a). The U.S. environmental movement: Crisis or transition ? Paper Presented in September at the Annual meeting of the International Sociological Association, University of Bath, UK.
10.
Brulle, R.J., & Jenkins, J.C. (2005b). Foundations and the environmental movement: Priorities, strategies and impact. In D. Faber & D. McCarthy (Eds.), Foundations for social change: Critical perspectives on philanthropy and popular movements (pp. 151-173). Lanham, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield.
11.
Carmin, J., & Balser, D.B. (2002). Selecting repertoires of action in environmental movement organizations. Organization & Environment, 15, 365-88.
12.
Cotgrove, S. (1982). Catastrophe or cornucopia: The environment, politics and the future. Chichester, NY: John Wiley.
13.
Dalton, R.J. (1994). The green rainbow: Environmental groups in Western Europe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
14.
Dalton, R.J., Reccia, S., & Rohrschneider, R. (2003). The environmental movement and modes of political action. Comparative Political Studies , 36, 743-771.
15.
Devall, B., & Sessions, G. (1985). Deep ecology: Living as if nature mattered. Salt Lake City, UT: Peregrine Smith.
16.
Dewey, S. (1998). Working for the environment: Organized labor and the origins of environmentalism in the United States, 1948-1970. Environmental History, 3(1), 45-63.
17.
Dobson, A. (2003). Social justice and environmental sustainability: Ne'er the twain shall meet? In J. Agyeman , R. D. Bullard, & B. Evans (Eds.), Just sustainabilities: Development in an unequal world (pp. 83-98). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
18.
Dreiling, M. (1997). Remapping North American environmentalism: Contending visions and divergent practices in the fight over NAFTA. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 8(4), 65-98.
19.
Dreiling, M. (1998). From margin to center: Environmental justice and social unionism as sites for intermovement solidarity. Race, Gender and Class, 6(1), 51-69.
20.
Dreiling, M., & Wolf, B. (2001). Environmental movement organizations and political strategy: Tactical conflicts over NAFTA. Organization & Environment, 14(1), 34-54.
21.
Dryzek, J. (1994). Australian discourses of democracy. Australian Journal of Political Science, 29, 221-239.
22.
Dryzek, J.S. (1997). The politics of the earth: Environmental discourses . New York: Oxford University Press .
23.
Foreman, D. (2006). Take back the conservation movement. International Journal of Wilderness, 12(1), 4-8, 31.
24.
Gottlieb, R. (1993). Forcing the spring: The transformation of the American environmental movement. Washington, DC: Island Press.
25.
Gottlieb, R. (2001). Environmentalism unbound: Exploring new pathways for change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
26.
Kitchell, A., Kempton, W., Holland, D., & Tesch, D. (2000). Identities and actions within environmental groups . Human Ecology Review, 7(2), 1-20.
27.
Martin, I.M., & Steelman, T.A. (2004). Using multiple methods to understand agency values and objectives: Lessons for public lands management . Policy Sciences, 37(1), 37-69.
28.
McKeown, B., & Thomas, D. (1988). Q Methodology. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
29.
Norton, B.G. (1991). Toward unity among environmentalists. New York: Oxford University Press.
30.
Norton, P. (2003). A critique of generative class theories of environmentalism and the labour-environmentalist relationship. Environmental Politics, 12(4), 96-119.
31.
Obach, B. (1999). The Wisconsin labor-environmental network: A case study of coalition formation among organized labor and the environmental movement . Organization & Environment, 12(1), 45-74.
32.
Obach, B.K. (2004). Labor and the environmental movement: The quest for common ground. Boston: MIT Press .
33.
Oliver, P.E., & Johnston, H. (2000). What a good idea! Ideologies and frames in social movement research. Mobilization, 5(1), 37-54.
34.
Pulido, L. (1996). Environmentalism and economic justice: Two Chicano struggles in the Southwest. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
35.
Rohrschneider, R., & Dalton, R.J. (2002). A global network? Transnational cooperation among environmental groups. Journal of Politics, 64, 510-533.
36.
Rose, F. (2000). Coalitions across the class divide: Lessons from the labor, peace, and environmental movements. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
37.
Salazar, D.J., & Alper, D.K. (2002). Reconciling environmentalism and the left: Perspectives on democracy and social justice in British Columbia's environmental movement . Canadian Journal of Political Science, 35, 527-566.
38.
Schlosberg, D. (1999). Environmental justice and the new pluralism. New York: Oxford University Press.
39.
Schurman, R., & Munro, W. (2006). Ideas, thinkers, and social networks: The process of grievance construction in the anti-genetic engineering movement. Theory and Society, 35, 1-38.
40.
Shellenberger, M., & Nordhaus, T. (2005). The death of environmentalism: Global warming politics in a post-environmental world. Retrieved September 15, 2008, from http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/01/13/doe-reprint/
41.
Swedeen, P. (2006). Post-normal science in practice: A Q study of the potential for sustainable forestry in Washington state, USA. Ecological Economics, 57, 190-208.
42.
Tarrow, S. (1998). Power in movement: Social movements, collective action and politics (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
43.
Woolley, J.T., & McGinnis, M.V. (2000). The conflicting discourses of restoration. Society and Natural Resources, 13, 339-357.
