Jeremy Trombley

Environmental Anthropology

Final Paper

Grounding Environmentalism Through Place-Based Social Movements

As I write this, the World's leaders are gathering in Copenhagen, Denmark to negotiate a

solution to one of the biggest problems to face humanity. They are not seeking an end to the

many social ills that plague our world such as war, poverty, hunger and disease, though many

of those will play a role; they are trying to find ways to address the most far reaching and

potentially devastating environmental problem we have seen, Global Climate Change. Rarely

has the world been at once so united and so torn apart by an issue. Wealthy countries are trying

to find a way to continue the behavior that has brought us here in the first place – burning fossil

fuels to foster economic growth – and poorer countries want to push ahead with growing their

own economies because they feel left behind. There is an inequality of relations that many

people claim constitutes an environmental debt owed to poor nations. The question is, how can

the wealthy nations pay that debt while maintaining their own prosperity?

Along with the World leaders have gathered millions of protestors, both within

Copenhagen and around the world. These groups are demanding a real solution, not a band aid

or green-washed fix like the cap and trade system that's being offered in the US. Many of them

claim that the carbon reductions promised don't amount to enough to reverse the severe effects

of climate change. Some of these activists represent marginalized groups from around the

world – those that have ben left out of the prosperity of the world system, who will be most

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affected by the effects of climate change, and who will likely bear most of the costs of any

solutions. These groups seek to have their voices heard among all of the talk. They want to

ensure that their ways of life will be preserved, and that the World leaders will not forget about

them as they so often have in the past.

Climate change is the first environmental issue that affects all of humanity on a global

scale, and the nations of the world are coming together to find a global solution. However, all

of the solutions being proposed fall into a Western Modernist framework, emphasizing

government regulation, technological advances and market based approaches – the same kind

of thinking and behavior that brought us here in the first place. The question is, can the same

kind of thinking ever give us a real solution? Perhaps we need to be looking for alternatives to

the Modernist solutions. Such alternatives are beginning to emerge in the margins of world

system; alternatives which may provide more effective, and more equitable solutions to the

environmental threat than the people in Copenhagen could ever hope to achieve.

Many scholars claim that we are currently in a stage of Late Modernity, where, despite

the efforts of critical analysis and the rising voices of subaltern groups, the dominant nations of

the world are attempting to continue the Modernist project (Giddens 1991). This system, based

on a disembedded desire for endless progress and endless growth, is responsible for many of

the environmental and social problems that we face. It is important, therefore, to situate

Modernity in its historical conditions in order to understand where it came from, how we got to

our current position in the world system and what we can do to fix the problems with which we

are faced.

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 Modernity emerged in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, but it's roots extend back to

the 15th century in the beginning of the Age of Exploration, the growth of the nation-state and

the colonization of the New World (Escobar 2004). Those who benefitted most from this

expansion were those who could disconnect themselves from social and ecological ties; those

who could travel to distant regions, exploit the resources and people there and return to Europe,

the global center, to trade the fruits of those resources. Buckminster Fuller called them the

Great Pirates, and many of them were just that (Fuller 1982). Sir Francis Drake, for example,

is regarded either as a pirate who robbed and pillaged the seas or as a national hero who

brought great wealth to the British empire. These individuals became the new global elite,

supplanting the aristocracy that had ruled before them, often through violent revolutions that

claimed to be in the name of “the people.” Once taking power, however, they often

demonstrated their commitment to the people by suppressing further revolutionary tendencies.

It was from this crucible that Modernity emerged as a philosophical, social and cultural

system. Philosophically, it positioned Man as the center of all knowledge and rationality as the

foundation for knowing. Sociologically, it was disembedded from local context as relations of

distance overtook face-to-face relationships. Culturally, it valued expert knowledge and

promoted individualism, freedom and equality utilizing a language of rights (Escobar 2004).

The exploitative relations which gave rise to this system were retroactively naturalized by

projecting an image of all Others as inferior and in need of guidance from technocratic experts.

Furthermore, these same exploitative relations, previously defined by distance, were then

introjected into relations of proximity by abstracting and disembedding people and the

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environment with the tools of economics, political theory and science (Graeber 2007; Hornborg

2001). This meant that no person or ecosystem was free from the possibility of exploitation;

people became labor, voters or consumers and ecosystems were reduced to an amalgamation of

resources to be extracted and exploited. No other world system had been so successful in both

encompassing the globe and transforming its own people and environments into commodities

to be exploited.

Expanding out from Europe, Modernity has since found its way into almost every part

of the globe – attempting to homogenize, to make the Other into itself or, where that wasn't

possible, to subvert and marginalize the Others. The process began with colonialism, but has

since taken on a new face with neoliberal economics and the strategic use of debt. Modernity

has become Globalized. Some scholars claim that there is nothing outside of Modernity, that it

has effectively subsumed every part of the world and every aspect of our daily lives (Giddens

1991).

Modernity, however, contains a contradiction: it consumes the very ground that

supports it. Because it is based on abstractions and an insatiable drive for growth and

expansion, Modernity is compelled to consume both the people and the environments upon

which it is based. Environmentalism emerged from the existential anxiety that resulted when

this contradiction was recognized, as people began to witness, first-hand, the harmful effects of

the Modern way of life (Grove-White). However, environmentalism has increasingly been

subsumed as a modernist discourse itself – creating a disembedded and abstracted

environmentalism. Modernist environmentalism, because it is disembedded, cannot help but

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induce a delocalizing effect, deterritorializing social and ecological life (Hornborg 2001;

Escobar 2008, 32).

The result is a conflict mirroring the nature/culture divide that is one of the hallmarks of

Modernity (Cronon 1996), pitting “dark green” environmentalists who seek to protect the

environment from humans at all costs against those who believe that the world will forever

accommodate our needs. Mainstream environmentalism seeks to find a balance between the

two by “greening” the economy – quantifying environmental services and values, attempting to

account for environmental destruction in the economic system, and supporting consumer based

environmental responsibility. However, none of these solutions situate people within the

environment, instead they play logic games with abstract concepts in order to find solutions

which have little to do with actual environmental problems and may actually do more harm

than good. “Without the constant, experience-near resonance of place, these voices risk

forgetting the contexts in which they were raised, devoting themselves to the perfection of their

own, objectified intonation, echoing in the empty labyrinths of disembedded abstraction”

(Hornborg 2001; 228).

Take for example, the cases of fisheries management, biodiversity conservation, and

deforestation. These agendas have been driven by a techno-scientific or regulatory framework

based in abstract concepts, rather than the lived experience of those who lived in the affected

areas. When these solutions were applied, they often failed because they lacked the complexity

and adaptability to deal with the local conditions both ecological and social. They often either

pushed the local communities out of the system all together, as in the case of biodiversity

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conservation or ignored local knowledge and local conditions that alter the implications of

imposed solutions. In many cases, they failed despite warning by locals who recognized the

potential problems and tried to tell the program administrators what they saw (Ostrom 2009).

Instead of a Modernist environmentalism, then, we need to seek alternatives. The

question is, from where will these alternatives arise? Some globalization scholars have claimed

that there is nothing outside of modernity – that modernity has effectively subsumed every

Other (Giddens 1991). However, Modernity has never been truly totalizing; it has never fully

permeated the daily lives of people on the ground. Even in Europe and the US, where it gained

most of its momentum, there have always been pockets of space and time where modernity

never fully permeated (Escobar, 2007). In these places, life is defined by particular

relationships between individuals, communities, and a sense of connection to the land. It is

from these spaces, across the globe, that new alternatives to global Modernity are beginning to

take shape. “[T]here are practices of difference that remain in the exteriority

(again, not outside) of the modern/colonial world system, incompletely

conquered and transformed, if you wish, and also produced partly through

long-standing place-based logics that are irreducible to capital and imperial

globality.” (Escobar 2004). These alternatives to Modernity articulate difference and

alternative forms in several key ways. They are place-based rather than space-based, they are

self-organized from below rather than imposed from outside, they are heterogenous rather than

homogenous, and they are polycentric rather than monocentric. These qualities combine to

create an alternative that is nearly impossible for Modernity to subsume because they are so

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dramatically different from the Modernist project (Escobar 2008; Rocheleau 2009).

Groups which are place-based are fundamentally counter to the modernist project. “...

[B]y place we mean the engagement with and experience of a particular

location with some measure of groundedness (however unstable),

boundaries (however permeable), and connections to every day life, even if

its identity is constructed and never fixed” (Escobar 2008; 30). The way of

life in these communities is deeply entangled with the environments in which they are found.

Where modernity seeks to disembed life from social and ecological ties through generalized,

abstracted relationships, place-based communities depend on a direct relationship to the land

based on lived experience and practice (Hornborg 2001).

People who work the land, for example, have a sense of the environment that's based in

lived experience and practice developed over the course of many years. This provides them

with an embodied knowledge that ties their lives to the land in a unique way (Escobar 2008).

Typically, they have an investment in the land, not just as a source of income, but as a basis for

a way of life, a heritage. Furthermore, as these communities persist for long periods of time,

they become co-constructors of the ecosystems that they inhabit. Often ecological research will

demonstrate that these regions are rich and biodiverse precisely because of the practice of the

people who live there (Rocheleau 2009). The fact that their way of life is deeply entangled

with the environmental conditions, means that the preservation of the land is the same as the

preservation of the way of life.

That's not to say that everyone should drop what they're doing, move out to the country

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and start working the land. That would result in a land grab and would simply spread the

population out over a much wider area, creating more problems than it would solve. The kinds

of environmentalism promoted by people like Wendell Berry are appealing for their pastural

utopianism, but ultimately they are untenable. Working the land becomes a kind of poetic or

ascetic practice for those who can afford to do it without earning a living from it (White 1996).

Farmers can't afford to do that and neither can poor urbanites, nor would such a practice be

capable of supplying the world with its basic needs. It would be the wealthy who would benefit

mostly from such an environmental exodus and the poor would again be stuck with the

consequences.

Instead, an environmentalism grounded in a sense of place would recognize the land

workers as the foundation of society, and seek to build connections from them to the rest of us.

This is already beginning to take shape in some parts of the industrialized world through local

agriculture movements, CSAs and farmers markets. If we take care of the people who work the

land – instead of basing our relationship to those workers on unequal exchange, power and

systemic exploitation – then they will take care of us and the environment.

Another feature, that of self-organization, plays an important role in undermining the

influence of Modernity. “I would like to think that these movements suggest

novelty at two levels: at the level of the organizing logic itself (self-

organization and complexity); and at the level of the social basis of

mobilization (place-based yet engaging with transnational networks).”

(Escobar 2004). The concept of self-organization comes from the emerging

study of complexity theory which incorporates insights from cybernetics,

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general systems theory, chaos theory and other similar areas. It has been

used to describe physical processes such as crystallization, biological

processes such as the development of the fetus, and, more recently, social

processes (Mitchell 2009). In social terms, self-organization refers to the

processes by which individuals and groups come together from below to

form a larger organization with emergent properties – as opposed to

organizational structures that are imposed from above. The groups are

often (but not always) extraordinarily non-hierarchical, and democratic, and

are organized around principles of counter-power which limit the ability of

any one agent to dominate the structure (Graeber 2004).

These organizations have been referred to as meshworks (Escobar

2008), assemblages (De Landa 2006), or, my favorite, Rhizomes (Deleuze

et. al. 1987). A rhizome is a root structure where the roots of individual

plants fuse together to form a massive tangled root system which is more

effective at drawing nutrients and supporting the plants. One key

characteristic of the rhizome is that it is heterogeneous; many individual

plants are incorporated into one large system. This is similar to an

ecosystem where many different species are integrated within a larger

system. Another characteristic of the Rhizome is that each individual plant

can be removed from the larger structure and still be viable, though in a

modified form. When you pull up a clump of grass, for example, you will

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see that it is made up of many different grass plants fused together. If you

break up the clump into many pieces, and spread them throughout your

lawn, they will each take root and make a new clump of grass (Deleuze et.

al. 1987).

This heterogeneity makes social movements and the networks they

articulate more resilient. Should one solution fail, then the whole system

doesn't fail – instead other groups may learn from others mistakes and

create new, more robust solutions. These solutions are more localized,

adaptable and effective than the usual solutions offered by Modernist

systems (Ostrom 2009).

It is often argued that global problems require global solutions, such

as those being negotiated now in Copenhagen. Elinor Ostrom (2009) has

shown that global solutions are not necessarily better than localized,

polycentric ones. Global solutions are prone to leakage, where individuals

or groups may get away with breaking the rules because of insufficient

monitoring and enforcement. They are also prone to “piggy-backing”,

where individuals or groups appear to be doing something to solve the

problem, but actually aren't. Instead they are simply continuing the

practices that cause the problem in the first place, while deluding the public

into thinking that they are helping (Ostrom 2009). In the polycentric

approaches that she supports, the rules for governing resources emerge

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from the relationship between the different communities and the land.

Solutions are defined discursively through continual negotiation and

renegotiation rather than imposed from above – in other words, they are

self-organized. These solutions are less prone to leakage and piggy-backing

because they are regulated from within rather than from the outside and

because the area that needs to be monitored is much smaller (Ostrom

2009).

Monocentric approaches, because they are articulated and

implemented on a large scale, are difficult to implement and also difficult to

change once implemented. Polycentric approaches, on the other hand, can

be continually negotiated and renegotiated as the circumstances dictate.

Furthermore, they can build upon local knowledge and place-based

experiences. Monocentric approaches must be generalized and abstract

because they must be implemented in a variety of conditions, but these

approaches may end up ignoring important features of the local conditions

or local knowledge that might prove useful (Ostrom 2009).

One way that these alternatives to modern globalization have taken

shape is in the form of social movements. Social movements are

associations of individuals and groups with a common set of concerns and

grievances who mobilize through political performance in order to have

their concerns addressed and their grievances redressed. They tend to be

heterogeneous and non-hierarchical in organization They are politically

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organized so that no single group can dominate the discourse, and the

discourse of the network emerges from the collection of group and

individual interests (Escobar 2008). Every individual within the activist

group has their own specific set of concerns and every group within the

network has it's own agenda. This means that social movements are able

to create a broad resonance which enables them to reach beyond their

immediate concerns and constituency to network with other groups and

individuals. These networks can be used to effect change on the national

and international scales where many decisions are made undemocratically

(Juris 2008).

Social movements are not necessarily environmental, as is the case

with the Gay Rights movement, but they may be, and particularly when

place-based communities are involved. Place-based (not place-bound)

(Escobar 2008; 30) social movements articulate a different logic of

environmentalism, one that is particular and deeply entangled with the

environment rather than abstract and disembedded. Furthermore they are

networked broadly, with other social movements, activist groups,

politicians, and NGOs to be able to effect change on a larger scale than

their particular place. This entails engagement by local movements with

broader environmental networks and with other place-based actors. “In this

way, social movements develop a political practice that can be described as

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place-based yet transnationalized.” (Escobar 2008; 32).

These movements are generally not environmental in the usual

sense, in that they are struggling to protect the environment for abstract

environmental values. They are environmental precisely because their lives

are deeply entangled with their environment, and because the preservation

of their way of life entails preservation of the environmental conditions

which sustain it (McNeil 2005). When these conditions are threatened, the

community's way of life is threatened and vice versa. Social movements

provide a way for the people to defend their environment and their way of

life against outside forces that seek to exploit or otherwise limit the

accessibility of the region.

Most of the these social movement struggles are framed in terms of

environmental

justice. Environmental justice is a framework which ties environmental

exploitation to the exploitation of marginalized group. It makes it possible

for people to recognize when the benefits and consequences of

environmental destruction are unfairly distributed, and provides a way for

groups to articulate resistance to those unequal relations (McNeil 2005).

Often times, environmental justice is also tied to issues of race and gender,

as those are the two main ways that Modernity has marginalized groups.

However, some groups, such as Coal River Mountain Watch, mentioned

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below, have used the concept of environmental justice in terms of the

exploitation of people who are not necessarily marginalized (McNeil 2005).

There are many examples of social movements enacting alternatives

to Modernity in anthropological, political ecological and geographic

literature. Below are three examples that are of particular interest for

developing an understanding of the way these groups are formed, how they

represent an alternative to Modernity, and the potential limitations of the

role of social movements in a grounded environmentalism.

Dianne Rocheleau's (2009) research in the Dominican Republic provides a prime

example of a grounded social movement: the Rural People's Federation of Zambrana-Chaucey.

The group emerged in the land struggles of the 1970s and 80s during which members used non-

violent methods to obtain land, rights to free-speech and protest and better schools, clinics and

roads. The Federation is composed of 59 independent, community-based organizations with

over 700 members in 500 families. Each group holds separate meetings and sends

representatives to the Federation's general assemblies. Also involved in the group were Farm

cooperative activists, Catholic Liberation Theology groups, and general Catholic Church

advocates seeking “basic needs.”

In the 1980s the communities were faced with a challenge. The government, in the

name of environmentalism, had mounted an intensive anti-deforestation campaign, barring

smallholder farmers from clearing land for farm plots or from making charcoal. Data collected

by Rocheleau suggests that the government selectively used conservation science to paint the

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local communities as being harmful and to downplay their role in grooming a rich, biodiverse

landscape. The National Forest Service, a branch of the military, arrested and fined farmers for

cutting down trees on their own property. At the same time, the state encouraged land

speculators, ranchers and corporations to clear more land for agriculture. Smallholder farmers

were forced to find other work to support themselves and their families.

In the early 1990s, the Federation joined with an international NGO – ENDA

(Environment Development Alternatives - Caribbean) initially to organize health clinics, and

midwifery resources for the communities. As the relationship took shape, however, ENDA

became a partner in other sustainable development projects. They helped to negotiate a deal

with the National Forest Service to allow members of the local communities to plant and

harvest accacia trees for a sustainable agroforestry project. By focusing on acacia trees, which

are generally considered to be invasive species but are also excellent sources of timber as well

as ethnobotanical medicines, ENDA and the Federation were able to convince the government

and the military to allowe them to harvest from the protected region. The result was the

creation of the Forest Enterprise timber project, a Wood Producers Association and a

cooperative sawmill – all of which have been very successful, benefiting both the local

communities and the regional environment.

Rocheleau argues that the Federation constitutes what she refers to as a “rooted

network” which sought to address both the environmental conditions that threatened the

communities as well as the unequal distribution of power. What emerged was a place-based

organization, built upon a radically democratic political structure which prevents any one

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community or group from taking full control. She also demonstrates another common theme in

place-based social movements: the importance of women. In The Federation, it was thought

that men played a central role since they were the main members of the farmers associations

and wood producers associations. However, Rocheleau found that, because of their role in the

Housewives associations, and their influence in the day to day routine of the family, women

were actually more responsible for the basic organizational structure of the Federation.

Another case (McNeil 2005) demonstrates that these place-based social movements do

not only come from peripheral regions – they can also emerge within industrial nations like the

U.S. In the Appalachian region, a new environmental threat has emerged in recent decades.

The mountains have been mined for coal and other minerals for hundreds of years, but never

has that mining been so destructive as the practice of mountaintop removal (MTR). In MTR,

the mountain is stripped of all of its trees, the top of the mountain is removed using large earth

moving equipment, and the seams of coal underneath are extracted. The mining companies

who use the technique claim that it is the most efficient way to extract coal, and that it actually

improves the landscape by making it flat for future development.

Many environmental groups have opposed the practice with little success. However, a

new form of organization has taken shape around the issue and they have had some success in

limiting and mitigating the effects of MTR. The primary example of such a group is Coal

River Mountain Watch (CRMW). What makes CRMW unique is that it is an organization

based in the communities affected most by MTR. These are mining communities, often with a

high proportion of union miners, but they are no less harmed by the practice of MTR. Miners

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are often opposed to the practice because it costs jobs; MTR is highly mechanized, so it

requires fewer people to work the mines. Many of the people in the communities themselves

are simply fed up with the environmental problems brought about by MTR. For them, the

mountains constitute a way of life. They hunt in the forests, fish the streams, gather ginseng

and other herbs and foods from the area, and MTR is putting an end to all of that – destroying

the very mountains that make life in Appalachia what it is. These communities have dealt with

the pollution of their water, the destruction of the forests and the mountains, the loss of quality

mining jobs, the infiltration of coal dust into their homes, and the degradation of the

communities themselves. As a result, they've organized against MTR, the companies that

practice it and the Department of Environmental Protection that allows it to go relatively

unregulated.

Interestingly, the members of CRMW don't describe the organization as an

environmentalist group and they are often hesitant to identify themselves as environmentalists.

The reason is that environmentalism in the region is identified with outsiders who come in and

try to dictate to the locals how they should live their lives. CRMW, on the other hand grew out

of the frustrations of the communities themselves. As a result, they describe themselves first

and foremost as community activists. “CRMW's activism, however, is not rooted in abstract

concepts or ideologies of enviromentalism. It is rooted in the lived experiences and

contingencies of everyday life in the coalfields” (McNeil, 249). They recognized an issue

within the community – the effects of MTR – and organized to resist it. As one member put it:

“...[T]he more we tried to establish justice in the coalfields, the more we found out that social

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issues and injustice runs hand-in-hand with the environment” (McNiel 2005). By building on

this sense of community CRMW has been able to garner a broad base of support within the

communities. Additionally, they've been able to work with the miners unions rather than

against them, and to draw political support from both parties.

Some of the limitations of social movements become apparent in CRMW, though. For

example, the fact that many of the members don't want to stop mining and burning coal could

be seen as running counter to a genuine environmentalism. Coal is a very dirty fuel, spewing

mercury into our water and sulfur and carbon into our air. However, the way of life of the

people in Appalachia is dependent upon coal mining – many of the families are long-time union

supporters and it would be difficult to imagine life in the region without the coal mines. It is

one thing to oppose mountaintop removal on the grounds that it devastates the local

environment and the local communities, but quite another to suggest a halt to mining in

general. CRMW has often had disputes with other environmental groups because of this issue.

CRMW depends on the support of the union and the community members, and, because of that,

the group cannot afford to come out in opposition to coal mining in general. Furthermore,

while the consequences of MTR are clear and dramatic, the same people are not opposed to

other forms of environmental destruction. This dramatically limits the scope of the

organization and creates tensions both within the group and between CRMW and other groups.

Nevertheless, CRMW could be seen as a node in a network which draws together the

environmental issues and the social issues where the two might not have come together in the

past. It could be seen as a root tying both the environmental and the social to the lived

experience of the communities that are affected by MTR. Without this important connection,

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the environmentalism that is articulated around MTR might end up doing more harm to the

region and the communities than it does good.

Urban people have ties to the land as well, and, despite the overwhelming influence of

Modernity, can develop a sense of deep entanglement too. In Stockholm, Sweden in the 1990s,

plans were made to develop a large part of the National Urban Park (NUP) (Ernstson 2008).

The park is a 27 square kilometer woodland area close to the city center. Researchers have

established it as a highly biodiverse area and the source of many ecosystem services in the city.

These qualities are partially based upon the long-term use of the park by various groups

including allotment gardens and by hundreds of years of royal management. As a result of the

development plans, a group of over sixty organizations joined together to preserve the park –

creating the Ecopark movement. In spite of having gained legal protection for the park in

1995, exploitation plans continue to arise and the movement has had to continually mobilize to

protect it to this day.

The Ecopark movement utilized a narrative in which the history of the park as a royal

land and the ecology of the park were seen as holistic and interlaced. This allowed the

movement to broaden it's support and mobilize a diverse group of organizations in defense of

the park. The movement comprised a social network in which some groups used their influence

to gain political support while others groups were defined by use relations with the park itself.

This diversity of groups was important to the success of the network, however, the researchers

pointed out that the structure of the network plays an important role as well. In this particular

case, the fact that some of the key user groups, and those groups with intimate knowledge of

the park were marginalized in the movement meant that the resulting management structures

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were limited. Ernstson proposes a model in which civil organizations, management groups and

user groups are integrated to form a more holistic and resilient form of ecosystem management

practice.

Clearly, there are many questions that remain to be answered if social movements and

place-based environmentalism are to be taken seriously. For one, it isn't clear that place-based

groups are always necessarily more environmentally friendly than other non-place-based

groups. If the concept of place-based is defined simply as being constituted by

environmentally responsible relationships then it is tautological to claim that place-based

groups are more environmentally responsible. Instead, researchers must define what

characteristics make a community place-based. To what degree must a group be deeply

entangled with its environment in order to be considered as such? Also, to what degree can

place-based group be integrated into larger world system forces before they can no longer be

defined as place-based?

Another important consideration is how place-based groups and these heterogeneous

networks integrate environmental issues that affect different scales. For example, how do they

address something like climate change, which affects the entire globe? Elinor Ostrom has

suggested that polycentric approaches are often more effective than monocentric approaches,

but is this always the case? When should governments intervene or step aside? How do the

many, locally based actors in a polycentric system integrate global scale problems into their

approach?

A third set of questions has to do with what happens when a social movement falls short

of seeking a solution that benefits the environment or what happens when a social movement's

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goals are, in fact, counter to an environmental agenda? For example, a social movement whose

main goal is to gain more jobs for a community might accept any number of solutions that have

little to do with preserving the local or the global environment. They may accept more mining

operations, a coal-fired power plant, or logging operations. Should those desires be always

respected simply because they emerge from the communities themselves? At what point do we

reject a local group's desires based on some environmental claim that they don't perceive to be

relevant?

In Copenhagen, the world's leaders attempt to hash out a solution to Global Climate

Change and the rest of us hope for something useful to come out of the talks. However, we

might be looking in the wrong place. It's possible that solutions to this global problem will not

arise in centers of power such as Europe and the US, but rather in the margins and borders of

global Modernity. This is not to say that we should stop trying to find global solutions, but that

we shouldn't allow that search to blind us to alternatives that are always emerging from

unexpected places. Perhaps these alternatives will provide the key to moving beyond Late

Modernity towards a future that is both more environmentally responsible, and more just.

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