Assignment 4

Behav. Sci. 2015, 5, 121–153; doi:10.3390/bs5010121

behavioral sciences

ISSN 2076-328X www.mdpi.com/journal/behavsci

Review

Local Environmental Grassroots Activism: Contributions from Environmental Psychology, Sociology and Politics

Nikolay L. Mihaylov * and Douglas D. Perkins

Department of Human and Organizational Development, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University,

Box 90, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN 37203, USA;

E-Mail: [email protected]

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mails: [email protected] or

[email protected]; Tel.: +359-887-352-269.

Academic Editor: Jack L. Nasar

Received: 1 January 2015 / Accepted: 9 March 2015 / Published: 23 March 2015

Abstract: Local environmental grassroots activism is robust and globally ubiquitous despite

the ebbs and flows of the general environmental movement. In this review we synthesize

social movement, environmental politics, and environmental psychology literatures to

answer the following questions: How does the environment emerge as a topic for community

action and how a particular environmental discourse (preservation, conservation, public

health, Deep Ecology, justice, localism and other responses to modernization and development)

becomes dominant? How does a community coalesce around the environmental issue and its

particular framing? What is the relationship between local and supralocal (regional, national,

global) activism? We contrast “Not in My Back Yard” (NIMBY) activism and environmental

liberation and discuss the significance of local knowledge and scale, nature as an issue for

activism, place attachment and its disruption, and place-based power inequalities.

Environmental psychology contributions to established scholarship on environmental

activism are proposed: the components of place attachment are conceptualized in novel ways

and a continuous dweller and activist place attachment is elaborated.

Keywords: local activism; grassroots activism; environmental activism; social movements;

environmental psychology; place attachment; social representations

OPEN ACCESS

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1. Introduction

Public concern over toxic contamination of our air, water, land and food and the startling loss of

natural beauty and resources to development rose sharply in the 1960s and 1970s. Despite subsequent

government and corporate responses, continued concerns over various environmental threats have led to

a vast and growing environmental movement of activists, supporters, organizations and members. By

2000, there were well over 6000 national and regional environmental movement organizations in the

United States alone, and more than 20,000 local organizations [1] and with increased concern over

global climate change, the number of grassroots and professionally-staffed environmental advocacy

organizations worldwide has risen sharply. Entire, environmentally-focused branches of sociology and

political science have also grown in rough proportion to those public concerns and organized responses.

In contrast, until recently psychologists have devoted relatively limited attention to perceptions,

cognitions, attitudes, emotions, motivations and behaviors in response to environmental concerns, and

what they have studied is mainly at the individual level, largely ignoring the critical ecological context

and collective psychology and behavior of environmental activism.

Our goal is to place the psychology of environmental activism in the broader context of the

sociological, political and environmental studies literatures on environmental social movements. We

want environmental psychology to realize its vital relevance and importance on this issue and fulfill its

potential in helping us understand both individuals’ and communities’ complex responses to collective

environmental threats. To this end, we review sociology and environmental politics research on local

environmental activism, point out blind spots or directions for expansion, demonstrate the usefulness of

place-based concepts, relate place attachment research to studies of activism, and propose theoretical

syntheses and developments that can serve future studies. We begin by reviewing the history of, and

prior research on, grassroots environmental activism, including the origins of environmentalism, New

Environmentalism, and the environmental justice movement. Our attention then turns to the increasing

significance of the local scale in contentious politics and pose our three guiding questions for the review

and theory development of local environmental activism: (1) How does the environment emerge as a

topic for community activism and which environmental discourse (e.g., preservation, conservation,

justice, health, etc.) emerges as dominant? (2) How does a community become consolidated around the

environmental issue and its particular framing? (3) What is the relationship between local and supralocal

(regional, national, global) activism? To address these questions, we first turn to prior research, then

describe the key characteristics of the local, the environment, and their interaction in place and local

knowledge, place-based power inequalities and vulnerability. The latter half of the article addresses the

three central questions in some depth, synthesizing our three main scholarship sources and proposing

new directions for research. The last section contrasts NIMBY and more globally focused and liberatory

forms of environmental activism. We conclude with a brief reflection on place identity and inequality,

human agency and community empowerment.

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2. History of Grassroots Environmental Activism

2.1. Traditional Environmentalism: Preservation and Conservation

The environmental movement emerged in the second half of the 19th century. From its very start two

environmental perspectives, embodied in the debates between John Muir and Gifford Pinchot, competed

and complemented each other: preservation and conservation [2]. Preservation efforts were directed

toward keeping parts of the natural world, seen apart from human society and with an intrinsic value,

undisturbed by industry, often for human purposes like recreation. Conservation had a clear utilitarian

concern: its purpose was to ensure the sustainable use of a natural resource for generations to come. Both

of these environmental discourses [2] were reactions to the effects of early capitalism; they were,

however, centered around similar assumptions of modernity and utilitarianism that brought about the

industrial revolution and its environmental consequences in the first place. These assumptions were the

domination of nature by man and an anthropocentric view of life where nature was an object of human

needs for survival or thriving [3]. This period of “Romantic Environmentalism” [4] lasted well into the

1950s, but preservation and conservation are still among the most legitimate and widely-used discourses

and strategies for addressing environmental issues.

2.2. New Environmentalism

The 1960s brought an “environmental revolution” [5] in Western societies. Environmental issues

came to the front of public attention with some well-publicized ecological disasters and popular books

like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring [6]. With the post-WWII economic growth, industrialization, and

urbanization came quantitative and qualitative increases in environmental disruption and risk, and hence

the reckoning that environmental issues were human health issues, and that humans are not apart from

nature; a response to ecological threats to human health was necessary [2]. The new health concerns were

perceived by a new audience of a well-off middle class with increasingly post-materialist values [7], in

an atmosphere of general support for social change and social movements [8]. Conservation and

preservation were seen by many as no longer adequate to address the inseparable relationship between

human life and nature. Thus a mass movement of “new” or “reform” environmentalism [2] emerged.

This environmental movement shares important themes with new social movements (NSMs) [7], namely

post-materialist values (with questioning of economic growth), and the promotion of autonomy,

self-determination and oppositional collective identity (with the call for a green lifestyle and

independence from governmental or corporate control). The movement produced “green politics”,

especially in Europe, where Green parties came to represent environmental concerns in parliaments.

Environmental protection was also institutionalized in the United States, in direct response to severe

water and air pollution, through bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency.

A more radical shift in thinking about the relationship between humans and nature emerged in this

period: the Deep Ecology perspective [9]. Deep Ecology stood for equality for all forms of life, thus

stepping away from anthropocentrism. Every human generation should pass the world on to the next in

the same condition they received it. This idea was directed more to the everyday thinking and way of life

of humans than to structural forces for environmental issues. Thus, one of the main criticisms toward

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Deep Ecology was that some of its proponents put the blame on human nature, in an individualistic

framework of explanation.

2.3. Environmental Justice Movement

New Environmentalism was critiqued from the political right and left. It was also curbed

institutionally during the 1980s when neoliberal administrations started to ascend to power in the West.

On the one hand, the economic hardships of the 1970s brought back growth and capital accumulation as

highest state priority [10]. This comeback made national-level policy reforms aimed at restrictions on

corporate pollution harder to promote. On the other hand, the expansion of environmental policy made

apparent the differential treatment of certain groups and communities when protection of nature was

enforced in practice by institutions. New Environmentalism reflected the transformation of the

environment into a mainstream issue. The Environmental Justice Movement (EJM), the next wave of

environmental activism [4] reflected the realization that humans are indeed part of nature, but there are

social differences among them modifying that relationship. Progressive environmental reform made big

strides to protecting human health and nature; but social inequalities meant that White middle-class

citizens were the main group that enjoyed these new environmental rights. One of the goals of EJM was

to expand these rights to all groups in society, including those with less power and a history

of discrimination.

EJM emerged from the experiences of newcomers to the environmental movement: marginalized

social groups living in polluted communities sacrificed for economic growth. Central in these groups’

experiences were themes of injustice, deprivation and discrimination, and struggles for self-determination

and land sovereignty [4]. To define environmental justice from a community perspective, Schlosberg [11]

proposes three equally important components: equity in the distribution of environmental risk,

recognition of the diversity of the participants and experiences in affected communities, and

participation in the political processes which create and manage environmental policy.

While the policy-level expansion of environmental protection was less likely in the new pro-growth

climate, the horizontal expansion of environmental rights to local communities proved a more viable

path for environmentalism. One other key factor for shaping EJM should be noted: the legacy of the civil

rights movement provided experience in activism and, perhaps even more importantly, a rights master

frame [4,12]. Community struggles for healthy environment were justified as a seamless extension of the

struggle for rights—this time rights to clean water, air, food. To summarize, the most significant feature

and contribution of EJM is the assertion of a strong link between social justice and nature. It is a two-way

relationship: protecting the environment is a social justice activity because marginalized communities

are hit hardest by pollution; promoting social justice helps the environment because it is the social,

economic and power marginalization of communities that opens weak spots in the enforcement of

environmental protection.

The EJM is much more “local” than policy-level challenges and this localism begets some new and

different characteristics of activism. First, because a marginalized community faces multiple issues of

discrimination—social, employment, investment, housing, education, etc., environmental justice is one

topic in the agenda of multi-issue organizing [13]. Indeed, in the real-life experiences of marginalized

communities, environmental injustices are not abstractly separated from other domains of

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discrimination. Most often people in poor communities reside, work, learn, and take leisure within the

spatial boundaries of their community [4]. This holistic experience and multi-issue activism makes the

study of environmental efforts harder, because they are intertwined with other goals and actions. Second,

while there are multiple possible bases of power inequality, race, class or ethnicity are the dimensions

that are most likely to be quite homogeneous at the level of the community, where environmental threat

or resistance happens. Third, there are complex relationships between local and national or policy-level

environmental activism. Some scholars and activists call EJM a grassroots movement [14,15], or “the

new grassroots” [16], more radical in its empowerment of the victims of economic and power

domination. Localism can also be seen as limiting, because local wins do not change environmental

policy; local groups fight for enforcement, not reform [14]. This focus can be interpreted as parochial, or

Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) activism. Of course, local grassroots environmental groups should not

be subsumed under one type. Solidarity with other groups pays off as cooperation increases the political

leverage of protest activities [12]. There is also a complex two-way relationship between local and

national levels of environmental activism: local groups discover patterns to their grievances related to

discrimination, while national groups educate local groups in the environmental justice framing [12].

Some division of labor is also evident, for example direct action on local level and litigation on national

level of organizations [4].

The main battlefield of EJM might be local communities, but the power inequalities and their social

bases revealed by this struggle have helped the advancement of environmental thought as well. Once

highlighted, the link between nature and power has been examined from multiple viewpoints. Instead of

assuming a polar relationship between human society and nature, “political ecology” [17] examines a

dynamic relationship between them structured around different power axes. Some of these axes are

modernity, class, and race.

One important source of power inequality stems from modernization. The project of modernity is

about making the world legible and manageable [18]. It entails measurement, standardization, and

administrative ordering of nature and society, based on rationalization, bureaucratization, and the

application of science and technology. This vision is promoted by an ideology of progress, where some

worlds (social organizations, economic forms, styles of administration, and ways of life) are more

effective and civil than others and must replace them [19]. Modernization, the process of replacing the

traditional worlds with the modern, is driven by the state and the business organization. Outcomes of

modernization are industrialization, urbanization, a consolidated state, a capital-accumulation economy, and

more recently, globalization and surveillance. Modernization can be served by overt military force, as in

colonial exploitation, or a cultural myth of progress, as in peripheral regions of the West itself [19]. The

discourse of “development” is seen by many as another chapter in the expansion of Western reason [17].

Modernization creates a conflict between system and lifeworld [20]. The power inequality stems from

the coercive capacities of the state and organized capital, and the cultural appeal of the myth of progress.

Resistance to modernization can be a throwback to pre-modern life, or a post-modern libertarian

alternative. One important field of struggle is between colonial exploitation and indigenous people, the

movement for indigenous rights. A romanticized, early framing of indigenous rights affirmed local

knowledge of (harmonious) natural resources use and local ways of life as an alternative to (industrial)

development. A more realistic picture is for “an indigenous, grassroots-controlled modernization” [21], i.e.,

for locally-controlled development. Within Western societies, contentious rural politics exemplifies the

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conflict along this axis [22]. As rural communities reject the role of resource extraction periphery in a

rationally-ordered economy, they engage in both identity-based challenge to the cultural myth of

modernization and a political struggle with state power for local control [22]. A reactive, pre-modern

response claims the preservation of (or return to) a pre-industrial, pastoral communal life. A more

pragmatic, conservation approach is observed when communities defend investments in commodified

ruralism (e.g., tourism) or lifestyle (as in wildlife management by hunters). Finally, a post-modern

alternative stems from contested rural identity as a basis for a new social movement. This response

emphasizes self-sufficiency and autonomy, and a simple, close-to-nature, interpersonal-solidarity rural

society. All of these responses share a mix of pre-modern and post-modern rejection of scientific

expertise and the interfering state (in a characteristic NSM negative framing of demands [23]) coupled

with an affirmation of local knowledge, self-determination, and more democratic, local control. This

discourse can happen within an environmental rights framing, as with the demands for local

empowerment and determination [24], but also within conservation, preservation, health or even deep

ecology framing.

Ecological Marxism [25] links class and political economy with ecology. In this development of

Marxist thought the exploitation of nature and labor are closely related as they are production conditions

which capital cannot produce itself as commodities for further production. This pressure on natural

resources from capital accumulation is augmented by the exploitation of the labor of poor people around

the world. And poverty has been established as a major determinant of ecological degradation [17], as

the discussion below on vulnerability shows.

Finally, race has been studied as the most significant dimension in the social production of

environmental inequalities [26]. Environmental racism is the racial discrimination in environmental

policy-making, policy implementation, and decisions with regard to the siting of risky or controversial

facilities [26]. The EJM is often described as the people of color environmentalism [4], as it emerged in

urban communities of color where power inequities and marginalization were facilitative of projects like

landfills and pollution industries.

To summarize, the critical awareness of power and power inequities around environmental issues is

what makes EJM different from previous waves in environmentalism. Since the 1990s environmental

efforts have been directed along the discourses that emerged from the three waves of environmentalism.

First, the established institutional approaches of conservation and preservation, exemplified by

organizations such as Sierra Club and the Nature Conservancy. Second, New/Reform Environmentalism

with its focus on human health and ecological threat, represented by organizations such as Greenpeace

and Friends of the Earth [27]. And third, the Environmental Justice Movement with its critical awareness

of power and a strong grassroots base [28].

3. The Increasing Significance of the Local Scale

Does the arc of history of environmentalism bend to the local? The EJM narrative is clearly about

bottom-up activism, the “new grassroots” [15,16], trying to remedy the shortcomings of previous waves

of environmentalism [26]. Evaluations of the EJM see its clearest victories at the local level [26]. More

importantly, local environmental activism is “ubiquitous and recurrent, even in times when

environmental issues are not salient on [the] national agenda” [29] (p. 722). Some studies suggest a

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dramatic increase in the number of local environmental groups in the 1990s and 2000s [30]. What

contributes to the localization of environmental activism?

Firstly, the logic of environmental politics in the last decades has been about localizing. There are two

main reasons for this. On the one hand, after the significant policy wins of New/Reform

Environmentalism, implementation became the contested stage of the policy-making cycle. And, as

Rootes [29] points out, “implementation of environmental policy is necessarily local; the local is where

the rubber of policy meets the road of obdurate local circumstances” [29] (p. 733). On the other hand,

there is a consistent trend in environmental politics and activism to recognize and involve new groups

and communities. If early environmentalism was a cause of a small elite (Muir and Pinchot), new

environmentalism became a mass movement of the White middle class, and the EJM involved hitherto

marginalized communities [31]. This expansion was coupled with an increasingly differentiating view of

humans and nature: from humans apart from nature to humans within the environment, and finally, to the

realization that humans are not equal with regard to their environmental conditions and outcomes. Local

communities therefore are important agents and contexts of environmental politics.

Secondly, the political and economic logic of neoliberal capitalism increases the importance of

the local scale of development. Capitalism produces uneven geographical development in all of its

phases, as some places are “systematically privileged over and against others as sites for capital

accumulation” [32] (p. 355). With the advent of neoliberalism the polarizations between localities

became especially strong, because the stabilizing role of the Fordist-Keynesian state was diminished,

along with the import of its national scale of regulatory planning, decision-making and policy

implementation [32,33]. In neoliberal governance local communities are increasingly responsible for

local development and services (“governing through communities”, [22])—both with regard to

decision-making and resource provision [22,34,35]; they become the basic economic unit where

political struggles and socioeconomic production take place [32]. The result is commodification of the

local [22] and competition between localities in a constant struggle for being core and not periphery, and

for the very definition of these positions. The uneven distribution of gains and risks [26] among localities

is directly related to the environment: some localities become collectors for others’ refuses from

development; some define, hoard or exploit valuable resources; yet others turn the environment into a

quality-of-life selling point for desired dwellers.

Thirdly, from a sociological perspective, there is the trend of shifting politics to more particularistic

contexts, from national to community and individual scales. New social movements theory describes the

decentralized, expressive and identity-based protest in post-modern society [7]. Local environmental

grassroots activism can be explored through NSM lenses because contentious politics of a locality often

possesses some or all of these characteristics: it is based on or in defense of a shared place identity; it is

submerged in residents’ everyday lives and interpersonal networks within a place; it is reactive to the

intrusion of outside state or corporate forces; and it is particularistic, often turned inward to a

self-defined way of life.

The focus on the local scale of environmentalism should be accompanied with a critical examination

of environmentalism’s history narrative. Brulle and Pellow [26] observe that the literature is uncritical

and quite celebratory of the EJM. A frequent practice in the study of EJM is to assume that the

community is a single agent, a unitary unit; within-community differences and conflicts over

environmental issues are neglected (e.g., [11,13]). This blind spot is exemplified well in Schlosberg’s [11]

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expansion of the environmental justice concept to include recognition and respect of the diversity of

experiences in affected communities, where he means of affected communities, not within them. Hence

often the result is what Saitta [19] criticizes as research of movements in areas of risk focused on local

elites—“active, informed, and reflective citizens (environmental movements, boards of citizens, and the

like)” rather than on “ordinary people” and the general ambivalence of the inhabitants. Thus, the focus

on the local should serve both an intellectual and an ethical purpose—to advance the logic of

environmentalism’s recognition and inclusion of groups—now within communities (and especially the

non-elites), and to uphold the principle of justice by respecting diversity within communities. The

question of how the environment emerges as a (common) community issue is worth exploring in itself.

Despite the presentist bias of progress in the history of the environmental movement, in actuality

most environmental discourses coexist today [2], including within the missions of leading environmental

organizations: preservation, conservation, health and risks, deep ecology, environmental rights and

justice, local control and indigenous rights, local vs. expert knowledge, and the NSM “leave us alone”

motto. These discourses are in complex relationship, competing with and facilitating each other [1].

Even at the local level, environmental justice is not necessarily the dominant discourse, as Andrews and

his colleagues show in their studies [36,37] of North Carolina’s local environmental groups [38]. How a

particular environmental discourse becomes dominant in a local grassroots mobilization is another

question to study as we focus on the local.

Based on this review and analysis of environmentalism’s history, we will structure the rest of our

review around three groups of questions that we think capture the emergence and development of local

environmental activism:

1. How does the environment emerge as a topic for community activism? What environmental

discourse emerges as dominant in a community and how?

2. How does a community become consolidated around the environmental issue and its particular

framing?

3. What is the relationship between local and supralocal activism (regional, national, global)?

4. Prior Research on Local Environmental Grassroots Activism

We can draw on several research disciplines and bodies of literature to address these questions. A

major source is social movement or, more generally, contentious politics [39] studies. Local protest

organizations are understudied in the social movements field [37], and even less is grassroots

environmental activism [29]. In their review of studies of threat as an impetus for mobilization, Johnson

and Frickel [40] do not cite a single study of environmental threat; this is surprising given the fact that

environmental activism, and especially its local forms, is mostly a reactive movement [40,41].

Research from a SM perspective is focused on established topics such as participation in local

environmental organizations [42], organizational characteristics [37], selection of tactics [43],

environmental coalitions [44], political opportunities and outcomes [10], the media [36], and SM sector

determinants of the founding of environmental organizations [1,45]. This body of research, while

illuminative, is mostly focused on the organizational and supra-organizational level of activism, which

leaves untouched important aspects of local grassroots activism. A branch of contentious politics studies

that addresses more squarely the local level is environmental politics. An issue of the eponymous journal

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showcased studies of the organizational links of local to national activism, links between place and

contention, and framing of local environmental protests [29].

The first two questions we posed for examination above reflect the need we see to focus on not just

predictor variables, but also on the social and cognitive processes of local environmental activism.

Somewhat unexpectedly, a handful of rural studies [34,35] examine the links between the construction

of place meaning, local activist identity, and mobilization, by developing the concept of “place-framing”

(after “framing processes” in SM studies [46]). We welcome this cross-pollination between SM and

geographic studies and will propose suggestions for advancing this approach through the use of

environmental psychology research. Place attachment theory [47] applies concepts such as sense of

place and place identity to examine links between individuals, communities, and their physical

environment. One of the major topics in this body of research is the links between place attachment and

place symbolic meanings, and inhabitants’ reactions to disruptions and changes in the place (see [48] for

a review). This focus makes place attachment theory especially relevant to the study local environmental

activism, and its hereby proposed collaboration with contentious politics research—promisingly fruitful.

Recently, environmental psychology has adopted a social representations approach [48,49] that has

similarities to the framing processes concept in SM research; thus both perspectives (hopefully knowing

about each other) can serve as a conceptual framework for exploring grassroots processes.

Community psychology provides some useful explanatory constructs to link community perceptions

and emotions related to place and environmental threat to behaviors in response to those emotions and

perceived threats [50]. These place-based, but ultimately social perceptions (such as sense of community

and collective efficacy) and behaviors (such as citizen participation and neighboring) serve

meaning-making functions and consolidation processes in a community and constitute “social capital” at

the individual psycho-behavioral level [51].

Another important topic to develop further is the link between local and supralocal levels of activism

(question three above). The rallying cry of environmentalism—“think globally, act locally”—remains

just a rhetorical slogan unless there are both theory and actionable plans connecting grassroots actions to

national and global concerns and movements. However, this link still remains relatively neglected in

social movements research [41], where the focus is mostly on organizational links between different

scales of activism.

5. Characteristics of the Local and the Environment

When we study local environmental activism, we should take into account important aspects of the

local, the environment, and their interaction that shape activism [52]. In this section we will review and

build upon studies that have treated these two aspects; we will then incorporate their characteristics in

the theorizing on our three review questions.

When discussing local activism, we refer to a local, geographically-bound community as the agent.

The exact scale of the local can vary, for example by the extent of an environmental use, problem or

policy-making level (e.g., [53,54]). The concept of place is very useful here. According to Agnew [55], a

space becomes a place when it has a specific location, a locale—the shape of place defined material

boundaries and everyday activities, and a sense of place—the attachments of people to the place. The

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local community therefore is the group that shares lived experience in a locale, thus defining it as a

common place.

Spatial proximity facilitates the creation of strong ties, trust, and a sense of community [56,57]; it

structures social relations and institutions [55]. People living in a common locale build social networks

and community relationships around family, neighborhood, school, work, religion [13]. The

implications of local community for activism are manifold. First, communal lived experiences involve

practices and cognitions of the good life [29]; this opens up opportunities for prefigurative [58] and

NSM-type politics where a community’s activism is focused not on policy change but on protecting their

way of life in opposition to an external power [22,59]. In contrast, social movements are often directed at

a particular issue and policy. Second, and again different from mainstream contentious politics, local

community activism has a strong interpersonal and affective basis rather than, or in addition to,

instrumentally rational strategizing and political calculations. Therefore, understanding local activism

requires application of community and social psychology frameworks, with concepts like sense of

community and neighboring in a central role [51]. Third, as mentioned above, the life of a local

community presents a totality of diverse experiences and multiple issues. One issue, the environment for

example, cannot easily be abstracted into a separate cause in the way national movements focus on

specific issues and policies. For this reason the emergence of an environmental goal in a community

vis-a-vis other community issues (especially economic ones, but also others) is an important question

to study.

The environment provides the natural boundaries and material exostructure for community

relationships. When we study environmental activism, we mean the natural environment: material

ambience (space/capacity and ability to pass through), sensual ambience (scenery, sound, smell,

temperature), sustenance ambience (air, water, land, food), and living ambience (animals, plants). “The

environmental experience” [13] is one important part of common lived experiences; the

non-(human)-made materiality of a place mediates social interaction, mobility and daily routines [60].

But what is the meaning of nature in local environmental activism? First, nature cannot be reproduced by

humans and changes in it are often irreversible [11]. Fragility and uniqueness are commonly ascribed as

characteristics of the natural environment [61]. Then, nature is also a complex system, and even more

complex is its relationship with human systems. As Johnson and Frickel [40] observe, “environmental

problems are understood in terms of highly complex ecological and social systems interaction across

multiple temporal and spatial scales” [40] (p. 320). Finally, in contentious politics terms, nature is an

affected party: claims made by opponents have effects on nature and effects on nature mediate the effects

on opponents’ interests. This position creates a qualitative difference in the way problems, causes,

interests, and solutions are framed and understood. The fragility and uniqueness of the affected party

sometimes creates a sense of local ownership, a moral obligation to protect, to act on behalf of voiceless

nature [35,62]. The complexity of nature as affected party begets ambiguity with regard to the causes and

effects of disruptions in nature. This ambiguity is a major hurdle for local environmental activism [41]

and another potential area of contribution for environmental psychology and other cognitive sciences.

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5.1. Place as the Interaction of Local and Environment

The local and the environment as explored so far are quite like the social (community) and material

(nature) dimensions of a place. From Agnew’s definition of “place” is evident that it is both a material

and a socially constructed reality. Places are “sites where people live, work and move, and where they

form attachments, practice their relations with each other, and relate to the rest of the world” [60]

(p. 161). The use of place as a concept will help explore local environmental activism from a place

attachment perspective [63]. Two important interactions of nature and local community are local vs.

expert knowledge and the disruption of the quotidian.

Nature as an issue for local activism presents ambiguities with regard to causes, processes, and effects

of environmental disruption. This ambiguity is often deepened by the fact that environmental disruption

is produced by the use of complex technologies, resulting in varying levels of threat complexity [40].

Ambiguity in itself might be advantageous to the opposition of development if considered under the

principle of precaution which puts the burden of proof of innocuousness on developers [26]. While this

principle has rightfully been touted as a major achievement of the EJM, the pro-business climate of the

recent decades has all but nullified its application. Consequently, experts are summoned by proponents

of development to testify about the innocuousness of technological intervention, or more likely, about

the dubiousness of claims about harm. Local grassroots activists are in a difficult situation where their

claims are pitted against “scientific” knowledge and notions of certainty [29,41]. Interpretation of

technology and its fit with the local environment becomes an important task of local activism [62]. The

community’s advantage comes from local knowledge. Local knowledge is based on everyday life and

social interaction in a locale [26,48]. This first-hand knowledge gives authority and legitimacy to the

locals to contest pro-development expertise [34] and can be seen as complementary to scientific data and

thus adding clout to local environmental and public health efforts [64]. This is very different from the

approach of national environmental organizations that base their claims on scientific and universal

knowledge in order to influence policy-making, and often shun local protective efforts in order to protect

their own credibility [29].

When local knowledge is confronted with threat ambiguity, grassroots activism can be boosted by a

mechanism called disruption of the quotidian [65]. This is the disruption of everyday practices, and the

expectations people have for their perpetual reproduction. A disruption punctures people’s routines and

the way they take for granted their environment. The result can be grievances that beget a movement

mobilization. This social movement concept fits particularly well to local environmental activism

because three of the four types of events that Snow and his colleagues identify as breakdowns of the

quotidian are community disasters, actual or threatened intrusion into culturally defined zones of privacy

and control, and changes in taken-for-granted subsistence routines [65]. These events are very likely to

have either their source or a clear expression in the natural environment. Snow et al [65] think that in the

case of disruptions of everyday life activist framing of the issue is easier because it is “experientially

commensurate”. In contrast to activism around social issues where the identification of an issue as a

problem is an early major challenge for activists, local environmental activism can look to nature as the

wall where the message is written. The experience of an environmental problem is a crucial element of

local knowledge as opposed to abstract expert claims. However, there are limitations to this knowledge:

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while environmental disruption might be often palpable to dwellers, in many cases, like slowly-building

air or water pollution, threat is not apparent [40].

To summarize, the ambiguity of threat can be conceived as having three aspects: (1) complexity—how

difficult it is to describe the links between technological intervention and local effects; (2) actuality—

whether the intervention is already done or proposed/potential; and (3) naturality—whether the

intervention has a material expression in the natural environment. The combination of these aspects

shape and limit the reactive environmental discourses in a community. If complexity is low and the

threat is potential, discourses might be centered on development dilemmas, compensation and local

control. If the threat is actual but complex, local vs. expert knowledge becomes a focus of contention.

Actual and clear threat might result in justice, health and compensation topics. And in the particular case

of potential and complex threat that has a natural expression, a community might resort to

preservationist, “out-of-place” arguments and identity-based opposition. It is quite possible that

environmental discourses are taken up by community members to protect economic interests because the

naturality of the intervention provides opportunities to react in environmentally-protective ways without

necessarily caring about nature [34].

5.2. Place-Based Power Inequalities

Local environmental activists might frame injustice in terms of the power inequalities of class, race,

gender, or modernity. These dimensions obviously produce unjust outcomes not only for the environment

where marginalized communities live. The importance of locality and place though is also in that they

produce their own, place-based inequalities. The latter add an additional layer to local environmental

activism that cannot be directly subsumed under the rights expansion path of social movements. We will

touch here on remoteness, sparseness, mobility, and rurality as aspects of spatial vulnerability.

Remoteness and sparseness are sources of power inequality due to the “scalar spatiality of power and

authority” [60] (p. 159), the hierarchical nestedness of state power. Thus decisions for development are

made on different scales from the national through the regional to the local. Remoteness means a

community is far from a decision-making institution’s physical base; therefore, presenting concerns or

staging disruptive protest action is difficult. Additionally, remoteness also makes harder appeals to

potentially sympathetic audiences. Finally, often communities that are remote from urban centers are

also underserved, which makes them vulnerable when double-edged outside opportunities for

development appear [34]. Sparseness, which is slightly different from remoteness because it entails

living away from other remote communities as well, is a source of power weakness because of the

difficulty of mobilizing the support or cooperation of similar communities, a common strategy of local

environmental activism [13]. To close this point, it is worth noting that trends of power and resource

decentralization discussed above, coupled with advances in communication technology, might partly

alleviate place-based power inequality from these two sources.

Mobility is another place-related source of power. It is the ability to move a value in and out of the

particular place. Capital and labor are two often studied values pertaining to power in place [66].

Usually, capital is movable, and labor is place-bound, which creates vulnerability and dilemmas where

people choose between development and environment [19]. If capital is place-bound, the community has

a higher degree of control over it, and in the case of a development that disrupts the environment, local

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people can better assert their interests. If the natural environment of a place represents a unique or rare

unmovable resource, capital again must negotiate the terms of development with local communities and

their notions of good life. However, mobility as a function of material and cultural resources also creates

power inequalities within the network of an environmental movement [57] as more mobile activists

becomes bridging figures and leaders. Mobility is obviously related to remoteness, when the movable

value is citizens’ voice or physical presence (like in disruptive action). Mobility as an asset or use of a

place is opposite to remoteness—if a place is important for its flow capacity, its community has more

power stemming from the ability to disrupt this flow.

Finally, rurality can be a source of power inequality as a facet of the modernist axis discussed above.

One of the elements of modernization is urbanization, supplanting the rural way of life with the better or

more efficient urban order. The rural is socially constructed in opposition to the urban (and vice versa),

where government actions are those of interfering urban elites [22]. The position of the rural as the

periphery of the urban is culturally inferior and thus unequal in power. Variations of culturally

determined power inferiority are places or whole regions that are for any reason deemed stigmatized,

less deserving or backward.

The import of placed-based power inequality becomes clear when we consider the formation of

oppositional identity in response to disturbance of place. Class or race identity indeed has mobilizing

force because communities frame environmental injustice in the terms of discrimination and rights.

Class and race also provide opportunities for solidarity and expansion of support, while paradoxically

having potential for within-community divisions based on these identities. In contrast, placed-based

power inequality can produce place-based oppositional identity bridging other (divisive) identities

within a community, via an appeal to “the shared predicament of living in…remote, underserved, and

marginalized locales” [34] (p. 174). In other words, a realization of a common fate of being

discriminated because of the place you live in is one significant impetus for the emergence of a place

identity that in turn can consolidate a diverse community around an environmental protection action (cf.

the second review question) [67].

5.3. Powerlessness and Vulnerability

Since the start of EJM the social production of unequal environmental outcomes has come to the

center of environmental thinking. To reiterate, power inequalities across communities due to class, race,

cultural or other differences produce differential environmental gains and losses; communities targeted

for environmental risks or harms are chosen due to their powerlessness [15]. The central notion of power

should be examined more critically to take into account how it performs with regard to the environment

and the local community. In this section we will differentiate between a legalistic notion of rights, an

informal notion of power, and the notion of vulnerability as capturing in different ways the ability of a

community to resist environmental disruption.

Reform environmentalism was about new rights embodied in new laws—rights to clean air, clean

water, a healthy environment. Laws empower communities by defining what they have the right to claim

from governments and corporations. However, Schlosberg [11] critiques environmental justice

theorists’ legalistic notion of recognition of communities as parties to environmental politics. In their

perspective, recognition is a precondition to justice; we talk about rights and justice when we have

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citizenship (recognition). Schlosberg sees recognition not as formal and given, but as a contested

element of environmental justice. A “legal right to act” is not the “power to act” [68] (cit. in [69]). The

Habermasian notion of formal prerequisites of equality among deliberating opponents leading to

reasoned decisions may conceal realities of unequal capital. While a legalistic problem persists, where

certain communities are still not recognized as full citizens due to power inequalities when

environmental laws are enforced, as our earlier discussion showed, there are other reasons that power

will remain important above and beyond rights in a formal sense. First, the state consistently privileges

growth and capital accumulation [2,14], so the regulation of an industry is skewed in its favor, often

referred to as “regulatory capture” (for example, corporations can deliberately take risks, pollute and pay

fines without being criminally prosecuted) and sometimes even rolled back to stimulate development (as

in the exemption of hydraulic fracturing from the Clean Water Act). In this hypothesis, corporations are

back in the situation described by Gibbs [15] where they pick communities with less power to resist.

Second, even in a world of perfect formal power equality across communities, the ambiguity of the link

technology-nature-human health renders rights all but irrelevant. In the case of toxic waste the harm, the

cause, and the rights of the affected were unambiguous; later issues such as incinerators [70] or more

currently, hydraulic fracturing, carbon capture and storage, or underground coal gasification, do not have

immediate and clear effects on nature and human health. Rights cannot be invoked to stop such projects

because the effects on nature and communities are place-specific and contested between experts,

corporations, bureaucrats, and citizens. Consequently, a community’s informal power becomes crucial

in the decision-making process.

Even this informal notion of power does not capture all the subtlety of power inequality. We

introduce the notion of vulnerability and compare it to powerlessness. Consider as an example the

difference between a community sitting on a toxic superfund site and a community that is approached for

a fracking operation. The former situation is unambiguously coercive and unfair: the risks are clear, the

harms are visceral; for the community the site is a harm and only powerlessness can prevent action

against the environmental disruption. In the latter situation, the damage is unclear and conditional on

technology and its reliability. There are also gains in the form of royalty payments to local land owners.

In this case, whether the community will accept environmental threat or fight it depends, among other

factors, on its affluence, self-sufficiency, or better alternatives for development. The absence of such

local and locally-controlled assets we call vulnerability. Vulnerability means that a community, in a

situation of a trade-off between absence of environmental risks and opportunities for economic

development, may choose one “good” at the expense of another (employment vs. health). As Saitta

succinctly put it, “wages were more important than health” [19] (p. 1302). Poverty, as a measure of the

lack of locally-controlled assets, has been related to environmental destruction [17,19]. Not surprisingly,

as we noted above, ingenious environmental rights are most often a claim for a locally-controlled

modernization [21] as opposed to “industrialization without development” [19].

An analysis of different forms of power can show the distinction between powerlessness and

vulnerability: three basic forms are “power from”, “power to” and “power over” [71]. Communities

opposing intrusive development attempt to assert their power from imposed decisions (corporations or

states exercising “power over”). They do so because they have the power to pursue their own vision of a

good community, with the resources needed to accomplish it. Poor or marginalized communities that do

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not have this power to may prefer to accept externally-driven development, and not seek power from the

force that promotes it.

In addition, issues of powerlessness and vulnerability pertain not only to the relationship between

community activists and forces that threaten the environment. Power inequalities exist within

environmental movements, across communities and activists. A local grassroots group often finds itself

in a marginalized position within a network of activist communities, and the main determinant for this is

mobility, in turn determined by material and cultural resources [57], or freedom to. Such marginalized

position means not having voice in the strategizing, steering, and resource spending of a networked

movement, which might mean irrelevant or adverse movement goals and outcomes.

6. Environmental Discourse Emergence

6.1. Approaches to Analyzing Environmental Discourse Emergence

Our first review question pertains to the onset of local environmental activism: How does the

environment emerge as a topic for community activism and how a particular environmental discourse

becomes dominant? The environmental literature tends to give more general, descriptive answers. For

example, in the global North the environment is seen as a prominent social fault line where popular

struggles coalesce, while in the global South it competes with human rights and democracy [29]. In

another perspective, in industrialized countries where industrial development is internally-directed and

long established (“primary”) the environmental discourse is focused on health and trust in technology

and the experts; in developing countries where development is externally-driven and novel

(“secondary”), the discourse is focused on poverty and vulnerability, rights, local control and

participation [19]. We accept these observations as valid and probably applicable to the study of local

activism, but we attempt to address the question at the community level, following Bonaiuto et al’s

recommendation that “pro-environmental attitudes (…) should be conceived as place-situated

phenomena” [53] (p. 634). Our goal is to show how environmental psychology concepts and research

can enrich social movement theory and social representations theory as approaches to environmental

discourses, not in mechanistically predicting a particular discourse in a particular place, but in pointing

to links worth exploring.

When we discuss the emergence of an environmental discourse, we refer to the community processes

of interpretation and communication of an actual or imminent disruption to a place and its natural

materiality [48,72]. To build on our analysis so far, we start with a general model with three elements in

a place, whose relationships are objects of interpretation by local dwellers and activists as they make

sense of a place change (Figure 1).

The change in place is a potential or actual event/process that reconfigures the material and social

aspects of a place. At this point we do not evaluate it as a disruption, threat or development—evaluations

are an outcome of interpretive community processes [48]. Members of the community make sense of the

relationship of the change and its agents to the local community via social interaction, communication

and relating to the community’s history and self-image. These interpretive processes can facilitate the

emergence of an environmental justice and rights discourse or local control discourse if the community

relates this relationship to history of discrimination [4], a consciousness of power inequality [15,34] or

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an unfulfilled expectation of a just—that is, participatory-democratic—decision-making about the

introduction of change [11,48].

Figure 1. Community interpretation of relationships of change to nature within a place.

To apply an environmental psychology lens, we dwell mostly on the other two interpreted

relationships and how they shape community discourse and reaction to change. The links between the

community and its natural environment can be conceptualized as community place attachment: the

cognitive (identity), affective (bonding) and behavioral (dependence) attachment of individuals and

communities to a place [47,73] in this analysis, to the natural elements in a place. From a social

representations (SR) perspective, we can talk about the community representations of nature, comprising

identity, cognitions and practices of human-nature relationship [74].

The link between the change and nature within a place is interpreted along or compounded with the

interpretation of change to the community-nature relationship. Major topics of interpretation here are

technology, risks and (local) knowledge. Recent SR approaches in environmental psychology [48,50]

examine disruption with a focus on the perceived and symbolic dimensions of place, and the “fit”

between the new development and existing place attachments and place meanings.

Before elaborating more on the two relationships we will, for purposes of comprehensiveness, point

briefly to the context of the tripartite model as a source of discursive material. A community’s

interpretation and communication of change happens within a larger discursive context of the

environmental sector and society as a whole. The dominating discourse of the time, be it health [10],

rights and justice [4,12] or global climate threat [41] is likely to shape local discourse if the particular

community activists want to bridge their struggles above the local level.

6.2. Interpreting Nature and Change, and the Emergence of Environmental Discourses

We will examine place-framing, social representations, and place attachment theory for their current

and potential contribution to the explanation of interpretive community processes.

Place-framing analysis is an application of framing theory from social movements [46], focused on

“the material and symbolic dimensions of place as a basis for collective, identity-based activism” [34]

(p. 174). Martin [35] used directly the three functions of frames [46]: motivational (characterizing the

community as activist), diagnostic (defining problems and assigning blame), and prognostic (defining

solutions and actions to achieve them). The latter two functions are most closely related to the

interpretation of environmental change. However, how place features in these frames is not fully

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elaborated yet in the place-framing model. A proposed or actual change in the palpable natural

environment of a place can objectify change—a SR cognitive process of making the unknown known by

“transforming it into something concrete we may perceive and experience with our senses” [75]. Just as

important, the boundaries of a locale [55] provide a material criterion for defining in vs. out and thus may

facilitate the crucial realization of individual vs. structural causes of the issue. It is worth exploring these

cognitive uses of place and nature in diagnostic framing. In terms of prognostic framing, Martin [35]

studied changes to the physical place as proposed solutions to a local issue. We suggest advancing this

idea by exploring a community’s representation of ideal community and how it relates to actions and

goals. An ideal community imagined in the past can give rise to a reparative or preservationist discourse;

an ideal community imagined in the future can facilitate a creative, developmental discourse.

What these processes of framing are meant to do is essentially explanation, or making something

unknown known by connecting it to existing knowledge [76]. This connection work is known as frame

alignment [77] in social movement theory, but its cognitive and communicative mechanisms are not as

well elaborated as in SR theory [75]. This is why we believe a SR approach is very useful (but still

underdeveloped)—it can study the relating of existing collective representations of nature and

community-nature relationships to the new and unfamiliar reality of environmental change [74].

Furthermore, nature should be studied as an opportune subject in SR theory because scholars in adjacent

fields like cognitive linguistics [78] claim that metaphorical thinking (the basic way of knowing and

learning) uses spatial and natural anthropocentric relationships to make the world comprehensible [79].

While we claim that the SR developments in environmental psychology have advantages over the

framing approach, we need to elaborate them more to be able to explain local activism. We unpack place

attachment and the symbolic meanings of place [48] and relate them to the emergence of the

environment as an issue and a particular environmental discourse in a community.

6.2.1. Place Definition

Place attachment will be used in this paper as a multidimensional concept comprising behavioral,

affective and cognitive elements [73]. Place definition is “the socially constructed and negotiated

boundaries of the place, and the features and attributes of the place that give it a distinctive identity in the

minds of dwellers” [50] (p. 65). It is not part of place attachment per se, but is a precondition for

attaching oneself to a particular place and is relevant to the emergence of environmental discourses in

two ways. First, the prominence of nature in dwellers’ definition of place predicts the emergence of

environmental concern. Some studies examine natural as opposed to social representations of place [80,81].

Strong connectedness to a place’s nature predicts proenvironmental behaviors and attitudes [82] while

attachment to the social aspects of a place correlate with pro-development attitudes [81].

Second, and even more important, is the cognitive representation of nature in the minds of local

community members. For example, nature defined as fragile and unique was associated with

preservation and restoration discourses among the dwellers of Louisiana coastal communities [61].

Opposition to airports expansion in the UK was framed in environmental justice terms except in a

community with unique nature where preservation was the dominant discourse [41]. We want to

generalize these observations by proposing to think about a place-based ontology of human-nature

relationship [74]. Taking from the history of environmentalism and environmental discourses, we can

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posit that there are two important dimensions of this ontology: whether community members conceive

nature as part of, or as apart from community [29], and whether they conceive it as equal or subordinate

to the community. Instead of transposing the already discussed discourses to the community level, we

continue with place attachment concepts in order to show how these cognitions are shaped by behaviors,

emotions and identity in place.

6.2.2. Place Interdependence

Place dependence is established as the behavioral dimension, or element, of place attachment. It is

defined as a functional connection between an individual and their physical setting [83], indicating how

well the setting serves an intended use [84], i.e., users depend on it for certain needs [85]. This

understanding of the concept is very similar to the idea of the sustenance quotidian and its possible

disruption (see above). Elsewhere [50] we proposed the concept of place interdependence to better

capture the entirety of human behavior in a setting: the dependence relation between the individual and

the place is not one-directional; people create the place, including its natural configuration [74], they

exploit and/or take care of a place. The influence of an individual over a place is related to cognitions of

the place as an extension of the self (a dimension of place identity for Droseltis and Vignoles [86]), a

sense ownership of the place (identity-related symbolic meaning), or investments in place

(functional meaning).

Studies of interdependence of locals and nature suggest that environmentally-related attitudes and

actions emerge when the current human-nature practices, nature use and nature enhancement are

disrupted by change. In a study of attitudes toward industrial development of renewable energy

Devine-Wright and Howes [87] found that resistance with a preservation discourse arose from the

contradiction of environment providing restorative benefits and a new industrial use that “fences the

bay”. Another preservation discourse example comes from Woods’s study of rural activism [22] where

residents who had commodified local nature for tourism and lifestyle purposes opposed

resource-extraction projects. In contrast, Appalachian Trail hikers perceived favorably development on

the Trail as it enhanced their use of nature [88]. A very interesting example is found in Bonaiuto and

colleagues’ study [53] where some local residents (labeled ‘economists’) opposed environmental protection

of a natural area because of their commercial, extractive practices in the place. The logic of these cases

relates to Dunlap’s conceptualization of environmental problems as results of conflicting functions

(uses) of nature in one area: supply of resources, sink for waste products and habitat for living [89].

We propose a more general way to think about place (and its nature) interdependence and its

relationship to environmental discourses. Applying again ideas from the history of environmentalism,

we suggest a two-dimensional model of nature practices/nature interdependence (Table 1). The first

dimension is the familiar dichotomy of nature as part of community’s practices and as something apart

from them. The other dimension is active vs. passive behaviors toward nature—the former meaning

transformative, shaping the natural environment.

Table 1. Nature interdependence and environmental discourses.

Nature Apart Nature as Part Passive behaviors Commodifying Ecological Active behaviors Extractive Organic

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We label practices “ecological” when nature is part of a community’s life, but only as environment

sustaining human life, taken for granted. Usually this situation is only questioned in the case of

health-threatening pollution. Communities with such nature interdependence are likely to engage in

health and risks discourses. “Commodifying” practices treat nature as a backdrop for a desired lifestyle.

Its main use is as a commodity, related to property values, “a rural idyll” [22] lifestyle, or tourism. It is

the perceived untouchedness of nature that is valued (hence a passive behavior). Communities (or

members) with such interdependence are likely to engage in preservationist and local control discourses.

Practices that are both changing and treating nature as apart from humans are “extractive”—using nature

as a source of raw materials is an example. If this is a dominant practice in a community, we are likely to

expect local control (if a competing outside project is proposed) or conservationist discourses. Finally, a

behavior that is both active and one with nature is “organic”—these are often traditional lifestyles where

communities’ sustenance practices are rooted in nature (e.g., fishing, farming) and they see their life as a

harmonious part of a natural balance [74]. When this particular human-nature relationship is disrupted,

discourses of preservation, indigenous rights and knowledge, or deep ecology are likely to emerge.

6.2.3. Place (Nature) Bonding

The affective component of place attachment is place bonding—individual or community positive

emotional ties to a place. In PA theory a further distinction is made between nature bonding and social

bonding—affective-emotional bonds to the natural environment and to friends, family, community

respectively [50,73]. Place bonding has been associated with a negative attitude to place disruption [87].

It is not difficult to predict that strong nature bonding would predict the emergence of the environment as

an issue. We want to make two conceptual steps further: first, differentiate between positive place affects

instead of treating place bonding as continuous from positive to negative; and second, examine links

between these categories of affects and corresponding cognitions and behaviors. Place attachment is not

just a mechanistic sum of its elements; can we differentiate between positive affects related to nature and

how they relate to specific human-nature cognitions and behaviors in place? An affirmative answer is

also supported by SR theory, where SRs have value, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral elements [75].

For example, positive emotional ties with nature might involve pride, appreciation, care, satisfaction, or

dependence. These emotions might be related to particular nature cognitions, behaviors, and identity.

Appreciation or care might be in a cluster with organic interdependence and a cognition of nature as one

with humans; pride might be coupled with restorative and preservation discourses; satisfaction might

relate to commodifying or extracting practices; and taken-for-granted dependence could go with

ecological cognitions and behaviors (refer to Table 1). Even more interestingly, we can borrow more

from SR theory and examine emotional dichotomies [75] as anchoring mechanisms for making sense of

imminent natural disruption. If positive and negative affects are dichotomist, we can think about how

nature bonding transforms into natural change aversion, and then test for the correlation of particular

negative affects to particular environmental discourses. For example, social psychology research

suggests that sense of injustice (and hence justice and rights discourses) is associated by emotions of

outrage rather than pity [90]. Can we draw connections like pride (positive)—shame (negative)—local

control (discourse); appreciation—outrage—justice; dependence—fear—health/risks; and

satisfaction—frustration—restoration, reparation and local control? These links, of course, are not yet

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backed by enough PA research but we think they are worth exploring as they provide a more detailed

treatment of the place attachment concept and a more organic examination of change than the

“fit” approach.

7. Community Consolidation around Environmental Discourse

7.1. Place Identity

We began with a critique of some scholars of local environmentalism for reifying a unitary

community as an agent: a community that understands environmental issues as one, articulates interests

as one, and ultimately acts as one. Instead of propagating such assumptions, we state as a second central

question, how does a community become consolidated around an environmental issue? If a plurality of

environmental discourses has emerged from the relationships between community, nature, and change,

how a discourse becomes consolidating?

Within-community difference might be based on the same social diversity that creates

between-community discrimination: class, race, gender. Differences can also be more place-related,

growing from different place cognitions, place interdependence (including economic interests in nature)

and place bonding. A crucial discursive and interpretive process in local environmental mobilization is

the creation of a common identity that enables a community “to bridge dissimilar environmental values

and practices” [34] (p. 172). And the main pathway to this common identity in the framing literature is to

“prioritize place over other social identities” [35] (p. 733). Identity framing is part of the third (and last)

framing process, motivational framing, in social movement theory [46]. Place identity is also the last,

cognitive, element of place attachment [73] and we will discuss how these analogous concepts from

different disciplines can communicate to answer our question.

Rural studies applying framing theory to place identity start with an overall observation that place

identity has largely supplanted occupational identity as a consequence of neoliberal decentralization,

devolution of government, and unraveling of corporate group representation [34]. Groups with diverse

social and economic statuses living in the same place are more alike than groups of the same status

residing in different places. This observation is consistent with the first source of common place identity

that place framing scholars advance: common identity is based on common daily-life experiences, sights

and conditions that foster “location-based commonalities” [35]. This idea in itself does not give us

suggestions about how a community becomes consolidated because commonalities of place are

definitional. Another, more elaborated source of common identity in place framing studies is power

conflict and what we articulated previously as place-based power inequalities. Within this view, a

community is consolidated in resistance to an outside force. Locals realize they share a position of power

weakness; this power inequality may be place-based, as in the case of rural communities. Stronger

outside pressure results in stronger common identity [34]. This consolidating mechanism is consistent

with Gamson’s [91] perspective on framing, which has injustice, agency and identity elements. For

Gamson, activist identity is defined in opposition to an adversary (oppositional identity was adopted also

by NSM theory). The in-out dichotomy inherent to place seems to facilitate adversarial framing. Rural is

contrasted to urban in place-framing studies [22]. The awareness and articulation of a place-based power

inequality also contribute to injustice framing, which is based on moral indignation [91]: rural

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communities only want to live the way they like, but are encroached and threatened by globalization,

state bureaucracies and corporate greed [22]. The result is a consolidating frame with libertarian, NSM

and “rights” elements.

The place-framing perspective is thus focused more on the identity consolidation process than on how

exactly the materiality of place features in the resulting common identity. The adversarial framing, albeit

facilitated by the physical boundaries of a place, is a process germane to any, not just local, activism

(oppositional identity was adopted broadly by NSM theory). Furthermore, this scholarship addresses

less emphatically some questions it initially posed itself: how are reasons and scope of activism

articulated within identity framing [34,35]. In other words, why are we the ones to act and how is this

related to place (nature)? In Martin’s study, these questions are answered in place-unrelated terms: we

have a responsibility to act, we are a family-oriented community, we are workers [35]. Identity in the

place-framing studies seems to be place-based, but not so clearly or explicitly place-related.

Environmental psychology, with PA and SR theory, can complement place-framing by its focus on

the contents of place identity. In PA studies place identity is examined on an individual level as a

predictor of reactions to place disruption, and not as a collective outcome (or a mediator) of local

activism. Place identity is defined as “a cognitive mechanism, a component of self-concept and/or of

personal identity in relation to the place one belongs to” [92] (p. 281). “The interpretation of the self

would use environmental meanings to symbolize or situate individual identity. Thus one’s identity can

be partly formed, maintained and transformed in relation to features and uses of everyday

environment(s)” [93] (p. 160). Place identity is related to negative attitudes to environmental change

provided that change is interpreted as antithetical to a place (e.g., [87,88]). Place identity also seems to

be associated with pro-environmental attitudes [92]. More certainty about this relationship is hindered

by inconsistencies in place identity and place attachment conceptualization [92]. We can hypothesize

that community consolidation around an environmental cause will be more likely if nature features

prominently in a community’s place identity. From a social representations perspective we attempt to

look into the contents of place identity (as with place interdependence and place bonding): what is the

interpretation of self in relation to the natural surroundings. Conceptual inconsistencies actually hint to

possible modalities of place identity: while some authors study place identity as a general concept, others

do in its relation to natural surroundings, natural resources or as landscape attachment [92]. Consistent

with our discussion of place definition, place interdependence and place bonding, we posit that different

place identities will be rooted in different community-nature representations, different self-articulated

community roles in relationship to nature. Examples of identities that can be gleaned from studies in this

review are nature beings, nature owners, nature users, nature knowers, global nature protectors, guests,

witnesses (e.g., [34,61,74]). Threats to nature become threats to how one defines themselves [94]; for

example, the incremental loss of wetlands (and thus markers for navigation) in Louisiana was

experienced painfully by local navigators as destruction of personal identity and life purpose: of local

knowledge, authority and agency [61].

7.2. Place Attachment as a Comprehensive Concept

The discussion of place identity demonstrates again the relatedness of the components of place

attachment and the usefulness as a comprehensive concept. Place identity in relation to nature is often

Behav. Sci. 2015, 5 142

framed in terms of nature-related behaviors and practices, as a performative identity [95]. Similar is the

logic of social representations of nature where labor has a primary role [74]. Taking nature as a more

specific element of a place allows for a better observation of the human-place relationships in their

behavior, cognitive, and affective aspects. Moving forward from the study of environmental change as

an analysis of symbolic fit between change and meanings of place [48], we can examine change as it

relates to place interdependence, an emotional bond, and a nature-related identity. A step further is to

ask: can we conceptualize a dweller vs. an activist place attachment, or are these two forms of a same

modality of human-nature relationship? When we talk about place interdependence, we acknowledge the

possibility of pre-threat investments in nature; nature defense and nature maintenance behaviors might

be interflowing; activism is not just a sudden awakening after a life oblivious of nature in a place. When

we consider nature bonding, we can connect dweller and activist bonding via the emotional dichotomies

discussed in the previous section. And can we discern a link between certain activist identities and

nature-related place identities? A dweller-activist place attachment is probably more easily conceived

via the use of narrative forms, an alternative framing model by George Lakoff [96]. Some basic narrative

forms describing activism are “self-defense (villain hurts hero-victim), rescue (hero, with helpers, fights

and wins over villain), overcoming obstacles (hero as victim of circumstance who surmounts

difficulties), and achieving potential (hero has special potential and, through discipline and fortitude,

achieves it)” [96] (p. 129). Such narrative forms are more holistic in that they contain representations of

sets of causes, agency, roles, and goals. The framework of the hero’s roles can be easily translated into

how a community interprets itself in relation to an environmental disruption.

Two important specifications are necessary in order to avoid overstatement of continuity in place

attachment. First, place attachment pre- and post-threat can indeed change in significant ways, because

social movement research has shown that place “acquires meanings through campaigns, and

communities forge identity even as they mobilize against threats to their survival” [29] (p. 722). Indeed,

place attachment can be sensitized by threat [48,97] and identity is both a process and a product of

activism [98]. Second, PA components might be affected in different and contradictory ways by change,

for example by enhancing place interdependence while impairing place identity [88]. Such

contradictions are well elaborated in SR theory, within the concept of cognitive polyphasia. Further

research is necessary to examine continuity and disruption in place attachment and identity and the

consistency of place attachment components in relation to environmental change at both the individual

and community levels [99].

8. Local and Supralocal Environmental Activism

8.1. Local Activism and NIMBY

The third question we posed was: What is the relationship between local and supralocal activism

(regional, national, global)? The issue of detached and protective vs. expansive and transformative

local environmental activism is an old one in planning, environmental, political and psychological

literature [100]. We will begin by describing shortly the NIMBY concept as an analytical tool to discuss

local-supralocal relations and then present some possibilities for expansion of local activism.

Behav. Sci. 2015, 5 143

“Not-In-My-Backyard” is a genre of activism that, despite its personal perspective of notation, has

mostly been used by outside critics. It refers to “protectionist attitudes of and oppositional tactics

adopted by community groups facing an unwelcome development in their neighborhood” [48] (p. 430).

This activism is criticized by politicians or planners [101] for several reasons. First, communities are

accused of selfishness, because they oppose a necessary development for the common good (e.g., a

landfill), a locally unwanted land-use, LULU [69] that is however publicly desired. Second, NIMBY

groups are depicted as ill-informed, ignorant, irrational and alarmist [48,69,102]. We can see that these

two characterizations depict NIMBY activism as anti-modernist [103] from the modernist perspective of

rational, science-driven, national-scope institutions. Other criticisms claim that NIMBY activism is

driven by vocal local minorities [69], which speaks to our second review question. “NIMBY” can even

be simply equated to “local”, when a community remains in its actions within its territorial and issue

boundaries [104].

The NIMBY concept has been criticized profusely by scholars of local activism. It has been evaluated

as being a political label instead of an analytical characterization, stuck by politicians and developers

whose plans are obstructed by local resistance [101]. Researchers have also demonstrated that local

activists are highly informed about risks and technology and that self-interest explanations glorify

rational choice and ignore the importance of issues like justice, power, and trust [48].

The NIMBY accusation has also become very ambiguous with the decline of modernist pathos. With

decentralization and devolution of power under the optimistic label of governing through communities,

NIMBY activism may be praised as grassroots democracy and empowerment [69]. Pro-development

agents have faced the difficult task of differentiating “good” and “bad” participation [102]. What was

seen in NIMBY as anti-modern parochialism is now framed as tensions of postmodernity: a crisis in trust

to experts and science, a disillusionment with democratic deficits and accountability [105].

While the NIMBY label has been criticized for the political tool it sometimes is, and the phenomenon

itself has acquired new nuances in post-modern societies, it is a matter of discourse and contest around

environmental change. When we discuss expansion of local activism, we should bear in mind that a

community might focus on symbolic work of expanding their cause not for reasons directly related to

the change, but to avoid the NIMBY accusation. The NIMBY label can be almost as undesirable as the

local disruption.

So far in this section we have demonstrated that a local environmental protest does not have to

become supralocal to satisfy certain expectations. Indeed, often the institutional framework of an issue

leaves power entirely at the local level and scaling up is irrelevant. What we are interested in though is

expansion of local activism when change at the supralocal level has a liberatory potential. This is the

case when a policy change empowers or secures other communities as well (“Not In Anyone’s Back

Yard;” e.g., environmental rights laws) or because it addresses the source of the problem [15,69].

Examples of the latter are regulations and restrictions of technological processes that produce

environmental problems. The liberatory potential of such actions is in that their goals secure

communities’ freedom from environmental threats and unjust pressures. Expansion of community

activism can also bring about freedom to control their environment and local development, to defend a

desired way of life. Such expansion above the local level is expressed in building awareness of issue

causes, solidarity and common identity with other communities, networks of organizing capacities.

Behav. Sci. 2015, 5 144

8.2. From Local Activism to Social Movement

The social movement literature takes serious interest in how particularist action transforms into a

social movement. Flacks [106] talks about how resistance movements, which can be reactive and

protective, become liberation movements striving for radical change. Dalton and Kuechler [107]

describe the transition as one from interests to ideology. We can see that these descriptions are based on

behavioral and cognitive changes respectively. These dimensions are helpful in discussing types of local

environmental activism expansion.

The first scenario we see in local environmentalism studies is political expansion. Transcending the

local is necessary because the issue must be politicized and decided on a national policy level [41],

turned from a routine planning dispute (where locals are pitted against experts and bureaucrats) into a

high profile political issue [41]. Local activists attempt to frame the threat they face as pervasive and

universal in order to attract public attention and put it on the political agenda [40]. Issues salient on the

national political agenda can be taken up by environmental movement organizations (EMOs). Another

path to putting pressure on the national policy level is through networking and coalition-building with

groups with similar grievances and coordinating a national or regional challenge [29,44]. In the political

expansion, framing work is very important to relate to the general public, not just to define the issue as

public, but also to present the challenge as just and legitimate. Sometimes local issues must be

strategically framed to align with current master frames such as justice or climate change [41] or risk

being left in public oblivion [10]. The role of regional and national EMOs is also crucial, as

intermediaries between local and national scales and as “experts” in policy advocacy [108]. The work of

local and national organizations can be complementary within a division of labor along the

policy-making process, as when local activists highlight an issue that national organization then present

on a political level [29] or competitive, when national organizations pick issues or goals and carry the

rewards of success [57]. The political expansion is consistent with a contentious politics perspective on

social movements (e.g., [109]) where challenges are made to governments via institutional and

extrainstitutional means with the goal of policy change.

A second scenario described in the environmental literature is grassroots expansion. This is exemplified

best in the anti-toxics movement [15]. Emerging local communities that frame their issues in power

inequality and environmental justice terms learn about each other and connect into a network [13,26]. As

justice is the unifying frame, the community environmental problems can vary. No umbrella

organizations or advocacy EMOs are necessary; in the case of the anti-toxics movement, the Citizens

Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste (CCHW) was founded by Lois Gibbs as a platform for sharing

experiences and connecting local activists. A community-organizing model for expansion was

established where new groups mobilize and contact CCHW for training and consultation while

they maintain full local control of their strategy and actions [26]. Such a movement is a network of

places [57], where local organizations are affiliates that adopt similar discourses, claims, and tactics, but

do not follow a grand strategy or the orders of social movement organizations [57]. The links of

solidarity and identification are strong, but the lack of resources and disparate issues and timing do not

allow for the creation of strong ties and structure among organizations [57].

Cultural expansion we call links between a community and the outer world based on awareness of

larger issues and identity. This expansion fits best with NSM perspectives on social movements, where

Behav. Sci. 2015, 5 145

policy impact and national organizations are irrelevant; instead, groups share oppositional identity and

the desire to create alternative ways of living to bureaucratic rationality [7]. Some authors qualify local

activism as non-NIMBY even only for reflexivity and understanding of power and issues beyond the

local [29]. NSM local environmental activism does not have to have a common goal, target, or action.

Such groups strive to be left alone, to define and construct their own identity and life, alternative and in

opposition to hegemonic norms (prefigurative politics). Local activism exists in a loose cultural network,

for example, rurality [22]. Communities that oppose externally-imposed development understand the

larger conflict between rural and urban/post-modern and modern, and they share oppositional codes and

loosely defined identity; but they do not cooperate in networks or organize for national politics because

their fights are local and defining them in their own way is part of the struggle [34].

Finally, we should acknowledge a type of expansion we term tactical. Its purpose is to gain support

and sympathy of outside publics or obviate NIMBY accusations. Because the NIMBY label has

generally become so undesirable, local environmental groups can adopt larger frames such as justice or

preservation in order to legitimate their opposition to a local development. The environment actually

presents an opportunity to frame a concern in a less self-interested way because, as we discussed

previously, nature can be an affected side apart from the claim-maker. Thus rural activists equated

preservation of rural lifestyle to environmental preservation [22]. Similarly, an environmental rights

framing was applied by cyclists in London who demanded bike lanes from the city [110] in order to gain

public support. Certainly, it is difficult to judge whether tactical expansion is just impression work or is

a beginning of a more profound understanding of the issues. However, often such causes do not multiply

or expand after their success.

8.3. Place, Nature and Expansion of Local Activism

Within this section we reviewed mechanisms of expanding local activism to a supralocal level:

universalizing the issue, picking a national institutional target, developing a broader understanding of

causes, aligning with salient societal frames, developing a common identity, networking and organizing

for national campaigns. We conclude by briefly discussing a more specific mechanism germane to local

environmental activism: the expansion of place and place identity. As we stated earlier, the definition of

a place, including its boundaries, is an outcome of interpretive and communicative processes.

Environmental psychology research suggests that different definitions have differential outcomes for

environmental attitudes. For example, natural protected areas in Italy were viewed negatively by local

residents while positively by citizens of the wider region [53]. We posit that a way to expand a local

issue is to expand symbolically the place it affects, frame it as relevant to a wider audience. This was the

case with the Gnangara Groundwater System which became an important region for the citizens of Perth,

Australia [54]. A unique or very important natural area can be framed as a national treasure and thus its

place of interdependence or symbolic relationships can be expanded to the national territory [93].

Communities sharing similar power and environmental inequalities, and proximity can construct a regional

definition of place, such as “Up North” in the case of rural communities in British Columbia [34].

Finally, certain places can be generalized (instead of expanded), as when place-based power inequalities

create solidarities and awareness of a common issue (e.g., marginalized rural communities).

Behav. Sci. 2015, 5 146

9. Conclusions

Local environmental grassroots activism is strong and ubiquitous, keeping pace with a world where

the national scale of problem-solving devolves and sublimates into the local and global. Its study must

take into account complex relationships between individual and community, place and region, humans

and nature, experience and technology, fate and power. We reviewed three main sources of scholarship

on local environmental activism, suggested areas of contact and cross-pollination, and advanced

tentative frameworks and hypotheses for future research. We have emphasized the limited but growing

theory and research in environmental psychology and the already extensive literatures in environmental

sociology and politics. This multi-disciplinary approach is challenging, but necessitated by the

inherently complex and multi-level nature of local environmental activism—comprising characteristics

of the local and the environment, of individual and community psychology, of social and institutional

relations. Disciplines that, although pertinent, were not included in our review, are community

psychology, where studies of local environmental issues are still inchoate [111], and the study of

individual-level environmental behavior (e.g., [112,113]). We decided to focus on the three chosen

disciplines as they held most potential (and actual studies as well) for a multi-disciplinary approach and

new directions for research. The purpose of this review is not to exhaust all sources of scholarship, but to

demonstrate how environmental psychology can add to established disciplines of contentious politics.

Indeed, power inequalities and their challenging are what local environmental grassroots activism and

related social movements are ultimately all about. However, this text aimed to demonstrate that

environmental psychology can also contribute to researchers’ and activists’ agendas resonating with a

diverse constituency of interest groups and stakeholders “to construct and politicize a local sense of

place as a means of rallying insiders against outside forces and pressures” [34] (p. 172). Our paper

contributes to scholarship on local environmental activism in several ways. We argued for the increasing

significance of the local scale by summarizing trends in three fields of social-political development.

Then, we included a discussion of what local and nature means as a prerequisite to studying local

activism, with the choice of nature’s fragility and uniqueness, complexity, and status as an affected third

party as crucial for understanding activism. Finally, we showed how local and nature interact in a place

by elaborating on ambiguity (threat complexity, naturality, actuality) and local knowledge.

Another important prerequisite for the study of local environmental activism we advanced was

place-based power inequalities. We added this dimension to the well-established axes of class, race, and

gender in studying inequalities. Four sources of place-based inequalities were proposed from synthesis

of prior research. The framing of place-based inequalities paves the way to study more carefully

common place identity as a mobilizing force for activism. We also discussed three expressions of power

inequality (formal, informal, and vulnerability).

Next, we elaborated a place-based approach to the emergence of environmental discourses in a

mobilizing community. Brief suggestions for a more expansive application of place-framing were made,

in the direction of including more consistently place, use social representations, and go beyond frame

functions from social movement theory. Then, place attachment theory was applied to activism, above

and beyond well-established research on reactions to place disruption. Activism and place attachment

were elaborated in a common framework. To accomplish this synthesis, the elements of place

attachment were elaborated in novel ways. Place definition, which is rarely taken into account in place

Behav. Sci. 2015, 5 147

attachment studies, was discussed. Next, place interdependence, a concept promoted by the authors, was

advanced within a two-dimensional model of nature interdependence and environmental discourses.

Nature bonding (as part of place bonding) was expanded in important ways: first by differentiating

between positive place affects instead of treating place bonding just as continuous from positive to

negative; and second, by examining links between these categories of affects and corresponding

cognitions and behaviors. We then proposed hypotheses about how these links can work, and how they

can translate into reactive (and possibly activist) affects.

When we discussed the consolidation of a community for activism around an environmental

discourse, we applied environmental psychology and social representations to the study of place identity

as a unifying community force. This approach gave us an opportunity to glean at the content of place

identity. The next advance we proposed was to conceptualize dweller and activist identity, and place

attachment more generally, as connected and perhaps interflowing. This step treats place attachment as a

more comprehensive and consistent phenomenon and relates confidently place attachment studies to

studies of activism. A continuous place attachment model also allows for the use of narrative frames in

the interpretation of nature changes.

Finally, in the discussion of the links between local and supralocal environmental activism we

proposed, based on prior studies, four types of expansion scenarios. To that we added a place-based

expansion, in line with the environmental psychology approach informing our paper.

Acknowledgments

We thank the editors, Jack Nasar and Fuli Cao, for their support and patience. We are also grateful to

our anonymous reviewers.

Author Contributions

Nikolay Mihaylov conceived the idea for the review, searched the literature, and wrote most of the

text. Doug Perkins wrote the sections on community psychology, supervised the writing process, and

revised and edited the drafts of the manuscript.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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