what is the nature of environmental movements?
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Answer:
Environmental movements across the globe involve a wide-ranging and complex network of interaction among a number of different organizations. They are composed of people and groups with many different viewpoints, which define their perception of the natural environment and their subsequent issue focus. Perspectives and priorities differ between and among environmentalists in the global North and the global South, as is apparent in the regional differences among the 74 national affiliates of FoE International (Doherty and Doyle, 2013). To understand such complex sets of interactions, sociologists have developed discursive frame analysis to capture and interpret different worldviews or ‘discursive frames’ within a social movement (Benford and Snow, 2000; Benford, 2011). A discursive frame is the set of cultural viewpoints that informs the practices of a community of social movement organizations, defines the goals and purposes of the organization, and provides guidance for action. In turn, this frame influences the organization's tactics, and methods of resource mobilization (Benford and Hunt, 1992; Brulle, 2000). It also defines a network of interaction among other similar organizations. The character of this network defines the scope and strength of the movement organization, relationships with other movement organizations and other institutions.
Within any social movement, there are generally multiple frames, which define distinct movement sectors or ‘wings’ that diverge in their definitions of problems, strategies, and methods of organization (Snow, 2004). This is certainly the case among the environmental movements. Theorists have identified a number of environmental networks based on their particular discursive frames, but these are highly contextual definitions that are applicable only within certain cultural and political boundaries. Organizational formalizations of ideological division are more likely in the formal party-political arena, where membership tends to be exclusive, than in movements, where organizations are more fluid, overlapping memberships are common, and the flexibility of the network structure may accommodate differences without much overt conflict. Moreover, common ground among organizations may mask greater diversity among the perspectives of rank-and-file activists (Wahlström et al., 2013).
Although the discursive frames adopted by environmentalists have consequences for the ways in which they campaign and the forms of organization they adopt (Brulle, 2000) but, as Dalton (1994) discovered, whether European EMOs had originally been committed to conservationism or ecologism made surprisingly little difference to their choices of strategies, tactics, and styles of action. The apparent convergence within the broad environmental movement sector was not simply a matter of the progressive institutionalization and incorporation of more radical organizations. FoE and Greenpeace may have started as activist groups and learned how to behave in ways that opened channels of communication to governments and/or powerful corporate actors, but some traditional conservationist organizations have become less conflict averse and more skilled in the use of mass media. EMOs' values do influence their strategy and tactics, but even more influential is the pattern of opportunities and constraints that derives from the structures of the national political systems within which those organizations operate (Dryzek et al., 2003).
Even where they embrace direct action, environmental movements almost always restrict themselves to nonviolent forms of action, but movement subcultures are not isolated from wider social and political contexts. Thus, violent environmental protests in Italy and Spain in the 1980s were part of the spillover from more general political conflicts – the political violence of the 1970s in Italy and militant Basque nationalism in Spain. Similarly, the wave of confrontational environmental protest in Britain in the 1990s was shaped by widespread and occasionally riotous protest against the Thatcher government's poll tax (Rootes, 2003). In general, however, national political cultures explain less of the variation in environmental activists' tactics than do political conjunctures.
Answer:
The environmental movements are social movements that involve local people and organizations for the conservation of the environment and for the improvement of the state policy especially inclined towards the environment.