Varieties of environmental movements, political strategies and movement dynamism

Abstract

Various scholars have recently discussed the possibility of establishing global and local alliances of counterhegemonic and environmental movements. However, such calls for overcoming the divides often remain theoretical and vague as regards to the ways in which different political strategies may actually come together in practice. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by tracing the intersections of different varieties of environmental politics in Salt Lake City (United States) over ten years. Based on preliminary observation, we identified three branches of the environmental movement in Salt Lake City, each of which appeared to engage predominantly in a different type of environmental politics: prefigurative, radical, and reformist. Unpacking each movement branches’ distinct political strategies, we compare them to expose their similarities and differences with regards to their collective identity, action repertoires, and organizational forms. In order to uncover the concrete intersections characterizing the movement branches, we analyse movement dynamism and their political strategies over the past ten years.