#title Ecological Resistance Movements (Preview)
#subtitle The Global Emergence of Radical and Popular Environmentalism
#author Bron Taylor
#date 1995
#source <[[http://brontaylor.com/102-2/publications/ecological-resistance-movement][brontaylor.com/102-2/publications/ecological-resistance-movement]]>
#lang en
#pubdate 2025-04-05T23:56:32
#topics veganism,
#publisher State University of New York Press, 1995
#cover b-t-bron-taylor-ecological-resistance-movements-1.jpg

** Table of Contents

<strong>INTRODUCTION</strong>

The global emergence of popular Ecological Resistance
<br><em>Bron Taylor</em>

<strong>POPULAR ECOLOGICAL RESISTANCE IN THE AMERICAS</strong>

Earth First! and global narratives of popular ecological resistance
<br><em>Bron Taylor</em>

With liberty and environmental justice for all: the emergence and challenge of grassroots environmentalism
<br><em>Bob Edwards</em>

Bread and soil of our dreams: women, the environment and sustainable development--case studies from Central America
<br><em>Lois Lorentzen</em>

Profits, parrots, peons: ethical perplexities in the Amazon
<br><em>Heidi Hadsell</em>

<strong>POPULAR ECOLOGICAL RESISTANCE IN ASIA AND THE PACIFIC</strong>

International native resistance to the new resource wars
<br><em>Al Gedicks</em>

Visitors to the commons: approaching Thailand's "environmental" struggles from a Western starting point
<br><em>Larry Lohmann</em>

Grassroots environmental resistance in India
<br><em>Vikram K. Akula</em>

Popular environmentalists in the Philippines: people's claims to natural resources
<br><em>Emma Porio, Bron Taylor</em>

<strong>POPULAR ECOLOGICAL RESISTANCE IN AFRICA</strong>

Grassroots resistance to dominant land-use patterns in Southern Africa
<br><em>Yash Tandon</em>

Luta, livelihood and lifeworld in contemporary Africa
<br><em>Ben Wisner</em>

<strong>POPULAR ECOLOGICAL RESISTANCE IN EUROPE</strong>

Have a friend for lunch: Norwegian radical ecology versus tradition
<br><em>David Rothenberg</em>

Between moderation and marginalization: environmental radicalism in Britain
<br><em>Wolfgang Rudig</em>

Num no more; empowering a nation and tuning the vocal chords
<br><em>Brendan Hill, Rachel Freeman, Steve Blamires, Alistair McIntosh</em>

<strong>CONCLUDING RELFECTIONS ON THE GLOBAL EMERGENCE OF POPULAR ECOLOGICAL RESISTANCE</strong>

Postmodern environmentalism: a critique of deep ecology
<br><em>Jerry A. Stark</em>

In search of Gaian politics: earth religion's challenge to modern western civilization
<br><em>Daniel Deudney</em>

In defense of banner hangers: the dark green politics of Greenpeace
<br><em>Paul Wapner</em>

The effectiveness of radical environmentalists
<br><em>Sheldon Kamieniecki, S. Dulaine Coleman, Robert O. Vos</em>

Popular ecological resistance and radical environmentalism
<br><em>Bron Taylor</em>

** Introduction

In the waning decades of the 20th century, ecologists have both described and predicted the collapse of natural ecosystems and widespread species extinction. Meanwhile, social scientists argue that the ecological deterioration detailed by these ecologists fuels the social conditions of famine, refugee displacement, ethnic rivalry, and violent social conflict (Homer-Dixon 1991; Homer-Dixon, Boutwell and Rathjens 1993; Kaplan 1994). Some even observe that such calamities erode the legitimacy and power of nation-states, often in direct proportion to their inability to resolve problems of environmental decline (Lipschutz and Conca 1993; Lipschutz and Mayer 1993; Rosenau 1990, 1993; Habermas 1983). Meanwhile, grass roots environmental organizations have proliferated and have become increasingly assertive. This development has further escalated social conflicts related to environmental decline.

This book is about grass roots environmental groups who are fighting against environmental degradation. Some of these groups, like those in the international deep ecology movement, hope to overturn the anthropocentrism of Western Civilization, an orientation they regard as a central cause of environmental problems (Devall and Sessions 1985). Others emerged from a variety of oppositional political movements (anti-colonial, national independence, anti-nuclear, Marxist, Feminist, Gandhian, etc.) as activists recognized the importance of ecological issues to their interests and objectives. Many of these groups have only recently assumed an "environmental" character. Still others, whose members were initially motivated by reformist environmental concerns, were radicalized by their experience of public indifference and organized corporate and governmental resistance to their ecological efforts.

These ecological resistance movements express a variety of critical ideas and employ a range of tactics which sometimes, in one way or another, appear to be "radical" or "militant." But the diversity of these movements makes it difficult to find an adequate umbrella term of reference for them. Uncritically labeling all these groups "radical" or "militant" can be misleading. Many of these groups eschew such labels.[1] Still, definitions are important. Although they often contain biased presuppositions which can lead an inquiry astray, without them, it is difficult to focus an inquiry. Perilous though it may be to begin with an umbrella term for the movements examined in this volume, some term of reference is required.

We refer to these groups inclusively as <em>popular ecological resistance movements,</em> a phrase inspired by Latin American social scientists who refer to non-middle-class, peasant, indigenous peoples and participants in underground economies. Yet we expand upon this definition to include populist environmentalists (who may be from middle-class backgrounds), such as members of the U.S.-based "environmental justice" movement and the "back-to-the-land" movements in Western countries such as Australia, the United States, and Ireland (Tovey 1993). Any single term of reference for the diverse movements explored in this volume will be problematic. Indeed many of the specific chapters struggle with questions about how we should conceive of these movements. Nevertheless, as the chapters unfold, what we mean by "popular ecological resistance" will become clearer. (We do not mean, for example, that all these movements are well liked or enjoy widespread support; often they are not even well known.)

This book focuses exclusively upon popular environmental resistance movements because of the dearth of scholarly attention paid to them. One reason for this lack of attention is that many such groups have recently formed--or have only recently assumed an environmental agenda. Moreover, analysts tend to focus upon well-established and mainstream environmental movements. Another reason for the lack of attention may be the tendency of social scientists to focus on the politics within and between nation-states. For these reasons, and perhaps others, ecological resistance movements have not received the scholarly attention one might otherwise expect.

*** Four lines of inquiry

This volume pursues the description and interpretation of these movements along four central lines of inquiry. The first illuminates these movements as much as possible through first-hand observations and interviews, often supplemented by documentary research.[2] The second examines these movements in the light of social movements theory. The third discusses in a more theoretical way the philosophical and moral views represented by some movement participants. The fourth attempts to assess the impacts and prospects of the movements described in this volume.

**** <strong>1) A descriptive tour of ecological resistance</strong>

The central goal of the descriptive line of inquiry has been to understand and represent these diverse movements on their own terms. Specifically, <em>we set out to describe movement participants' own perceptions about their ecological predicament, their understandings of the cause(s) of their predicament, and their proposed</em> <em>prescriptive remedies.</em> We also endeavored to hold in abeyance any assumptions that these movements might be similar. Instead, we hoped to allow generalizations to emerge from our collaborative observations, rather than attempting to use observations to prove preconceived theoretical ideas<em>.</em>

In section one, we begin our descriptive tour of ecological resistance in the Americas. Chapter one analyzes the spiritual politics of Earth First!, and the tendency of some "radical environmentalists" to view the global proliferation of grassroots environmental activism as an outbreak of deep ecology. This chapter poses problems that the following contributions help answer. Next, Bob Edwards examines the "environmental justice" movement. He illustrates, among other things, the increasing role ethnic minorities are playing in environmental activism in North America. Lois Lorentzen then introduces us to home-grown "eco-feminism" of women's environmental movements in Central America, and Heidi Hadsell leads us to an agrarian community of river dwellers far up the Amazon River in Brazil, who are struggling to overturn unsustainable resource exploitation in their region.

In section two, we begin a voyage to Asia and the Pacific through Al Gedicks's discussion of indigenous environmental resistance. Using case studies of such movements in Canada, the United States, Ecuador, and then in Malaysia, Gedicks stresses the central role indigenous communities are increasingly playing in struggles over resources and land practices. Next, Larry Lohman discusses Thai social movements which have captured the imagination of Western environmentalists, and cautions sympathizers not to view such movements uncritically through Western lenses. Vikram Akula focuses on the diverse popular environmental movements of India, while Emma Porio discusses grassroots struggles for resources in the Philippines which increasingly have assumed an "environmental" character.

In section three we continue on to Africa. Here the contributions of Yash Tandon and Ben Wisner paint a landscape where struggles for independence, democracy, women rights, and land increasingly blur with environmental concerns into social movements that are both old and new. Here again we learn how very different environmental movements in less affluent countries can be from those found in Western countries.

In section four, the final one organized geographically, we wander north to Europe. Here David Rothenberg provides a good feel for the essence of deep ecology, which has its origins in Norway. He simultaneously explores the increasingly violent conflict between the Norwegian government and the militants of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, who sink whaling ships and otherwise interfere with Norwegian efforts to resume whaling. Next, Wolfgang Rudig offers a history of the emergence of and obstacles to ecological radicalism in Britain, while Brendan Hill and colleagues introduce us to a little known movement in the Scottish Highlands where Celtic renewal and nationalism are linked to the quest for land rights, ecological restoration, and various forms of ecological radicalism.

**** <strong>2) Ecological resistance and social movement theory</strong>

A second line of inquiry uses current social movement theory to explain the dynamic interplay of macro-structural, organizational, and cultural factors in the emergence, development and impact of popular ecological resistance movements. Macro-level analysis considers broad changes in the structure of economic and political relations and the incursions of state and corporate power into formerly private spheres of life (Melucci 1989; Offe 1985). Social movement theory attends to how the structures of everyday life, culture, indigenous forms of organization, and shifting structures of protest traditions influence the emergence, activities and impacts of social movements (McAdam, McCarthy and Zald 1989; Morris and Mueller 1992). It also examines how such factors influence the tactics such movements choose and the narratives they produce. A number of this volume's contributors weave this line of inquiry into their analysis by considering whether the case studies add meaningfully to current discussions of social movement theory.[3]

**** <strong>3) The challenge to modernity</strong>

A third line of inquiry examines the manner in which popular ecological resistance movements challenge the philosophical, moral, and religious underpinnings of modern society. Found especially in the final, "concluding reflections" section, the contributions by Dan Deudney and Jerry Stark focus most specifically on these matters, providing competing perspectives about whether the philosophical and moral claims posed by deep ecology, and other forms of nature mysticism, are promising or compelling. These chapters especially help to bring into focus personal questions regarding what sort of environmental ethics and politics we should endorse.

**** <strong>4) The impacts and prospects for ecological resistance movements</strong>

A forth line of inquiry examines the impacts, prospects, and obstacles facing ecological resistance movements. Most of the case studies provide some analysis along these lines, but the final three chapters especially prioritize such assessment. Paul Wapner analyzes the international influence of Greenpeace, while Sheldon Kamieniecki and his colleagues focus in-depth on the effectiveness of radical environmentalism. At the end of the volume the editor also discusses the impacts and prospects of these movements, as well as "trends and tendencies" that can be discerned among them. Specifically the editor suggests that patterns in the perceptions of movement participants about the causes of their environmental predicaments, and in their prescriptions, make it possible to label these diverse movements "radical," if this is understood in a limited and qualified way.

Because these movements have received so little scholarly attention this volume places a premium on careful description. There has been no effort to impose a single analytic lens or point of view. Indeed, several chapters disagree about fundamental issues, others pose their own research questions and raise new theoretical issues, still others urge analytic caution by addressing difficulties in comprehending or generalizing about these movements.

The case studies assembled in this volume are not exhaustive. Nor have we fully discussed every issue in social theory or environmental philosophy raised by them. Nevertheless, this volume provides an unusual and complementary balance between description and theory, supplying insights from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.[4] Moreover, the rich descriptive data the contributors have provided can be mined for additional theoretical purposes and arguments by others. But perhaps the greatest contribution of this volume is that it offers those who embark on this global tour of popular ecological resistance a unique opportunity: to think afresh about a variety of pressing ecological, political, and moral issues that are raised by the emergence of these movements.

; Notes

[1] For example, in an uncritical and unqualified way, some observers label all these movements "radical environmentalism." By providing in-depth description and analysis of a variety of these movements, the present volume serves as an antidote to such oversimplification.

[2] This is the "grounded theory" approach described by Charmaz 1983, Emerson 1983, and Glazer and Strauss 1967.

[3] I wish to thank Bob Edwards for clarifying social movement theory for this non-specialist.

[4] The distinction between description and theory is useful, but often overdrawn. Descriptive work always involves an interpretive dimension and theoretical premises.

* Part I: Popular Ecological Resistance in the Americas

** Chapter 1: Earth First! and Global Narratives of Popular Ecological Resistance

We tell and hear stories. They awaken feelings in us. Thinking in response, we ponder the meaning of narratives. Is there a fable here, a moral lesson, a call to action? Personal stories can fuse with the broader narratives of communities and cultures--often unconsciously and uncritically--especially in social contexts characterized by little cultural diversity. But more often, integrating personal and cultural narratives is a difficult personal process. There are so many stories. Which ones move us? Which make sense?

The stakes are high in battles over narratives. These battles, and the stories themselves, shape our individual and collective identities, and thus our character. They tell us how we should live and how we should relate to others. Questions such as--Who am I?, How and with whom do I fit in?, Where is my community?, What is the good life?--are often if not usually resolved in narrative.

Since my undergraduate days, I have been moved often by what Roger Betsworth calls "outsider" stories. First, by "Liberation theology" with its story of Christians acting to promote <em>earthly</em> peace and justice. This spin on Christianity was striking in its deviance from the dominant, otherworldly Christian stories with which I was well acquainted; it also repudiated the close association between the Church and political power that has dominated the last millennia and a half. Liberation narratives, which explain inequality as the consequence of oppression also contradicted central U.S. narratives, including the "Gospel of Success" and the Enlightenment story of progress--both of which assume that hard work yields individual success and material prosperity--and that these consequences constitute the good society (Betsworth 1990).

Further exploration uncovered more stories and introduced additional, incompatible claims into the contestation. Complicating matters further, since factually irreconcilable stories still move people emotionally (sometimes even the same individuals!), it became obvious that affect and intuition were not sufficient grounds for choosing between competing narratives. It seemed, therefore, that competing claims would have to be arbitrated rationally--that only careful reasoning could help sort-out which stories made sense. Nevertheless, moral sentiments <em>are</em> connected to emotions and intuitions, to our capacity for caring. Consequently, we need to find an approach that can reconcile narratives presented to us with our own personal experiences, as well as an approach that recognizes the connections between the reflective and affective dimensions of moral experience.

My own experience has been that we can discover new insights by seriously considering the contending claims of competing narratives. For example, by researching liberationist claims I gradually became convinced that (1) multilateral "Aid" often exacerbates the plight of the poor by promoting cash-crop "monocultures" that, in turn, lead to food exports to affluent consumers while depriving subsistence foods to local populations; (2) huge "development" schemes such as hydro-electric dams "aid" displace rural peoples and destroy vast areas capable of sustaining them (Goldsmith 1983; McDonald 1993); and (3) such agricultural practices and development projects are intimately related to the world's declining biological diversity (Hayter 1985; Rich 1994). I was initially skeptical of such claims, since they contradicted (or at least qualified) a narrative with which I was much more familiar, that of the United States generously assisting less affluent nations.

As valuable as specific insights might be, however, even more significant is what I have learned about the value of outsider voices <em>per se</em>. Even when mistaken, they can raise important questions and focus attention on issues demanding thoughtful scrutiny. Sometimes they powerfully expose selfish interests and self-deceptions camouflaged in the dominant narratives of the politically powerful (Betsworth 1990). Outsider voices can carry valuable knowledge that guardians of the world's dominant narratives prefer would remain little-known. For example relevant to this volume's themes, protests by Native Americans over how Euro-Americans came and destroyed indigenous cultures and ecosystems can counter tendencies within the Euro-American culture toward unmerited feelings of superiority, while simultaneously demand respect for Native peoples and Mother Earth. In such ways, outsider voices can kindle moral imagination, obliging us to consider moral claims completely outside our own frames-of-reference.

By listening to and engaging strange voices and deviant stories in a conversation, and by making moral decisions in response, we can deepen understanding and build moral character. The initial step in such engagement is often the most difficult: the painful act of listening.

This book contains many stories of ecological resistance, and reflections about them. The seeds for this volume were planted in 1978 when I first read Edward Abbey's <em>The Monkeywrench Gang</em>, a novel about a band of fed-up environmentalists who resorted to sabotage in an effort to halt and reverse the destruction of a desert they loved. Abbey was an anarchist whose stories pitted freedom loving individuals against the dehumanizing and earth-destroying forces of an authoritarian, bureaucratic, and obsessively pro-development society. I first read it as fiction. But Abbey was romanticizing the exploits of an already emerging ecological guerilla force that, in 1980, took form as the ecological resistance movement known as Earth First!. Recognizing Earth First! as an outsider voice, in 1989 I decided to conduct field and documentary research, first to understand the movement as a historical and social phenomena, and second to consider its moral, ecological and political claims.

In this chapter, I first provide an interpretation of the key moral, ecological, and political claims articulated by participants in the Earth First! movement. I then describe perceptions shared by many Earth First!ers about grassroots movements around the world which they consider to be kindred movements of ecological resistance. In this way, I introduce Earth First!'s own narrative as well as other narratives of ecological resistance originating in diverse contexts around the world. My purpose in describing such narratives is not to endorse or promote them. Rather, toward the end of this chapter, I use the claims and perceptions embedded in these narratives to pose problems for us to consider throughout this volume. By studying the Earth First! movement and agonizing over its claims, I have deepened my own understanding of the moral, ecological, and political dimensions of contemporary environmental controversies. Even if we end up disagreeing with them, examining "outsider" claims and narratives can enhance our own understandings.

*** Earth First!: a new story of ecological resistance

Earth First! announced itself in the early 1980s with a series of humorous protests. For example, activists illegally unfurled a plastic "crack" down the face of Glen Canyon Dam, symbolically "liberating" the Colorado river. But soon the actions turned more serious as activists struggled to prevent destructive enterprises in wilderness areas. They blockaded logging roads, sometimes with activists bicycle-locked to machinery or buried up to their necks or perched precariously high atop wooden "tripods." Activists conducted multi-day "tree-sits" to prevent felling. Various forms of "night work," "ecotage," or "monkeywrenching"--movement parlance for sabotage intended to thwart environmental destruction--increasingly accompanied the civil disobedience campaigns.

Activists viewed ecotage as economic warfare against those who would destroy wilderness areas. By vandalizing equipment, pulling up survey stakes, driving metal, ceramic or quartz spikes into trees, and so on, practitioners hoped to halt the destruction by making it unprofitable (Foreman and Haywood 1987). Meanwhile, they took their message across North America: through guerilla theater, where activists dressed in animal costumes conducting mock trials of human corporate criminals; through poetry and song at demonstrations, in the courts, and in jails; through "road shows" (touring public presentations) often involving spellbinding storytelling woven into science-based arguments about the ecological importance of wilderness; and through the creative invention of ritual processes designed to evoke and deepen what they considered proper human perceptions of the sacrality of the natural world (Taylor 1993a). Less well known is their strategy of "paper monkeywrenching"--the threat or actual filing of administrative appeals and lawsuits by individuals and small groups of activists. Scattered around country, often self-taught, but increasingly sophisticated both legally and scientifically, such activists have been among the most effective North American campaigners for biological diversity.

In myriad ways these activists lived out their narratives of ecological rebellion, sometimes weaving their resistance into a larger evolutionary story: for example, in words originally expressed by the Australian Earth First!er John Seed, "I am the rainforest, recently emerged into consciousness, defending myself." This idea became a movement slogan when popularized by Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman. It suggested that ecological resistance is an evolutionary expression of self-defense--a necessary adaptation for re-harmonizing the human and non-human worlds.

Other movement stories have assumed nearly mythic significance, especially Aldo Leopold's wilderness epiphany about the intrinsic value of the non-human world, gained as he witnessed the "green fire" die in the eyes of a wolf he had shot. This story is strikingly similar to the description by Paul Watson of the day his gaze met that of a harpooned whale he was trying to save. Looking into that whale's eye revealed, Watson recounts, an "intelligence...that spoke wordlessly of compassion..., that communicated [that he knew] what we had tried to do." From this experience, Watson received his commission: "On that day I knew emotionally and spiritually that my allegiance lay with the whales...over the interests of the humans who would kill them" (Watson 1993b). Finally, in addition to these classic tales, there is a growing body of narratives about heroic environmental activists. Those engaged in ecological resistance, especially those injured or martyred, are often honored in poetry and song.

*** Deep ecology and the moral claim of Earth First!

With such tactics and legitimating stories, activists of Earth First! movement have advanced moral, ecological and political claims which constitute the three essential pillars of Earth First!'s ethics. Their moral claim is that non-human life is valuable, even apart from its usefulness to human beings. Every species has "intrinsic worth," and each should be allowed to fulfill its "evolutionary destiny." To this, many Earth First!ers add, humans are no more valuable than other species. This is a proposition posed dramatically, if implicitly, by those acts of ecotage risking human injury or death. This simple form of the moral argument has become known as Deep Ecology, a term coined in 1973 by Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, but quickly adopted by Earth First!ers in the early 1980s. The terms "biocentrism" (for life-centered), and increasingly, "ecocentrism" (for ecosystem-centered), expressed the conviction that all ecosystems should be allowed to flourish, that humans should not impede such flourishing, and when possible they should restore the natural preconditions for such flourishing. This biocentrism is contrasted with anthropocentrism, that is, a human-centered approach to the environment.

Accepting arguments like those advanced by Toynbee (1972) and White (1967), most Earth First!ers blame the major religious monotheisms of the West for fueling the anthropocentrism they generally believe is the most important cause of the human destruction of nature. In contrast, what animates most Earth First!ers are their own spiritual experiences in nature which convince them of the interrelatedness and sacrality of all life. Such experiences are the foundation of most deep ecological arguments about the intrinsic value of species and ecosystems. However, some activists believe it is counterproductive to their cause to discuss such underpinnings (Taylor 1995a).

*** A scientific argument for deep ecological urgency.

Based on their reading of the ecological sciences, Earth First!ers add the <em>ecological claim</em> that we are in the midst of an unprecedented, anthropogenic extinction crisis, and consequently, many ecosystems are presently collapsing. This is the second pillar of Earth First's ethics, and provides an essential underpinning and rationale for militancy. Without this claim there is no basis for urgency--no reason for people with deep ecological moral sentiments to risk their freedom or disrupt their private lives. If accurate, such ecological analysis reveals a wide gap between fact and value, between what is and what ought to be: ecosystems that <em>ought</em> to be flourishing are being destroyed by human action. This introduces the realm of politics, the necessary arena for strategy over how to bridge gaps between what "is" the relationship between humans and nature and what such relations "ought" to be.

*** Political analysis and the call to resistance.

Deep ecological moral perceptions combined with ecological urgency do not by themselves enjoin specific political strategies or tactics. The argument for such tactics requires political analysis. The heart of Earth First!'s <em>political claim</em> is either: democracy in the U.S. is a sham, thoroughly thwarted by corporate economic power, or, even if not a complete sham, the democratic political system is so distorted by corporate power and regressive human attitudes that it cannot respond quickly enough to avert the escalating extinction catastrophe. Moreover, Earth First!ers would argue that, in light of nature's intrinsic value, governing processes that disregard the interests of non-humans are illegitimate.

Many Earth First!ers add to such critique the ecofeminist contention that androcentrism and patriarchy play important roles in ecological destruction. Many agree that human hierarchy is also a key factor, drawing on Social Ecology or other anarchistic critiques. Few Earth First!ers would suggest, however, that either androcentrism or hierarchy fully explain environmental degradation. Nevertheless, virtually all of today's Earth First!ers believe patriarchy, hierarchy and anthropocentrism reflect related forms of domination that destroy the natural world. Most Earth First!ers agree that all such domination must be overcome if humans are to reharmonize their lifeways within nature.

Such political analysis provides the third essential pillar of Earth First!'s radicalism. Without it, in a formally democratic society, it is difficult to argue persuasively that illegal tactics are morally permissible. By asserting either that democratic procedures never existed, or that they have broken down, or that they camouflage domination, these activists argue that illegal tactics are morally justifiable.

These three claims lead to the assertion that the current situation--morally, ecologically, and politically--is so grave that tactics considered objectionable by most are instead necessary and even obligatory. Such analysis, in turn, provides for a continuum of tactics that roughly parallel these three claims. Some Earth First!ers prioritize efforts to change anthropocentric human attitudes by developing ritual processes that are believed to awaken nature-spirituality in urbanized humans. Others prioritize the use of scientific knowledge to argue for biological diversity in legal and policy making venues, sometimes through Earth First! spin-offs such as the Alliance for a Paving Moratorium, the Biodiversity Legal Foundation, or the Wildlands Project. Still others prioritize more aggressive political action, using a variety of provocative tactics to resist destructive enterprises, to publicize ecological injustices, and ideally, to precipitate the overturning of the intrinsically destructive industrial state.

Differences about priorities and tactics sometimes contribute to tensions within the movement. Nevertheless, most Earth First!ers believe that the struggle for biodiversity must be fought on all three of these related fronts--promoting spiritual awakening, ecological education, and fundamental political change. Most respect the work of those whose priorities differ from their own. All agree, as well, that the re-harmonizing of life on earth, requires the <em>international</em> expansion (and renewal) of deep ecological perceptions and actions.

*** International ecological resistance and radical environmental solidarity.

Earth First!'s very first symbolic act involved creating a memorial to the Apache indian chief Victorio, whose last-ditch, armed resistance to the European conquest symbolized to them the struggle to preserve ecologically harmonious lifeways in North America. From that moment on, Earth First!ers have celebrated ecological resistance movements wherever they could be found. Popular environmental movements are interpreted as kindred movements in different cultural garb, particularly when they appear to be motivated by nature-based spirituality, and Earth First!ers try to act in solidarity with such groups.

Among the most notable expressions of such solidarity are the U.S. based Rainforest Action Network (RAN), and the Australia-based Rainforest Information Center (RIC). The latter was founded in 1983 by John Seed, an Australian environmental activist introduced to Earth First! in the early 1980s by poet and counterculture visionary Gary Snyder. Seed liked what he saw in the Earth First! journals Snyder showed him. Soon he was in the U.S., participating in road shows that, in 1983 and 1984, established thirty rainforest action groups. This inspired Mike Roselle (an Earth First! co-founder) and Randall Hayes (another activist drawn to Earth First! in the early 1980s) to form RAN. Their initial goal was to coordinate the efforts of these groups. A 1985 strategy conference led, in turn, to the 1986 formation of the World Rainforest Movement, now based in Penang, Malaysia, which serves as an international umbrella network for rainforest activism.

Most prominent among the struggles celebrated (and often supported) by Earth First!ers and their compatriot solidarity activists are those engaged in by (1) people believed to live sustainably (esp. forest dwellers and indigenous peoples), (2) those animated by nature spiritualities deemed similar to deep ecology, and (3) those who have become especially militant, employing civil disobedience, ecotage, and (rarely) violence against the agents of destruction. A brief survey of the movements that have drawn the greatest attention of Earth First! and RAN provides a rudimentary sense of the scope and nature of ecological resistance, and the solidarity activism, that is unfolding internationally.

Substantial movement attention has focused on the struggles of Amazonia's Seringueiros (peasant rubber tappers) and indigenous peoples, who formed their own "Forest People's Alliance" in 1987 to defend themselves and their forests against colonizers (see Hecht and Cockburn 1989:183, cf. 160-63, 180-183). In the eyes of movement activists, the struggle of these groups, who promote "extractive reserves" (setting aside the forest for small scale gathering, hunting, and rotating small-plot agriculture) is clearly radical. Extractive reserves presume "communal land ownership [and thereby attack] private property and hence capitalism" (Hecht and Cockburn 1989: 181-182). Moreover, their tactics are often militant, including non-violent, usually illegal land occupations, as well as sporadic and desperate armed attacks on miners, loggers, or other settlers.

Dispatches from a 1989 alliance-building meeting of nearly a thousand delegates from twelve Amazonian tribes illustrate Earth First!'s fascination with such "kindred" resistance movements. This meeting was held in Brazil at Altimira, near the site of a series of dams planned for the Xingu and Iriri rivers, which are tributaries of the Amazon. During one session, a Kayapo woman threatened with a machete an attending Brazilian official. Reporting for the <em>Earth First!</em> journal, Sea Shepherd director Benjamin White quoted her as threatening, if "you build this dam, we will go to war, and you will die." White implied that the Indians were deep ecologists at heart, and likened their indigenous attitudes to Earth First's "no compromise" stance. "Unlike the typical language of moderation, conciliation and defeat of North American liberals" White wrote, "the Indians' statements reflected their years of armed struggle and unwillingness to compromise" (1989). Another article reported that nature spirituality fueled their resistance, quoting one Native leader, "It is necessary to respect our Mother Nature. We advise against destroying the forests. For a long time, the white man has offended our way of thinking and the spirit of our ancestors. Our territories are the sacred sites of our people, the dwelling place of our creator..." (Swikes 1989; see also Pearce 1991, 133-34; Hecht and Cockburn 1989, 212-213).

The struggle of the Ecuadorian Huaorani against oil exploration and extractive colonizers (see Gedicks, this volume) has similarly received recurrent attention. For example, the <em>Earth First!</em> journal mentioned how, in 1987, one group of Huaorani, the Tagaeri, killed a nun and a Bishop who were trying to proselytize and pacify them, thereby promoting the objectives of the oil companies.

The most common tactics employed by solidarity activists involve Amnesty International-style letter writing campaigns on behalf of people involved in ecological struggles, and boycotts attempting to halt consumption of products whose production causes deforestation. Virtually every issue of RAN's <em>World Rainforest Report</em>, the <em>Earth First! Journal</em>, and <em>Wild Earth</em>--the three most influential radical environmental journals in the U.S.--contains updates of various resistance campaigns, urging readers to write letters applying pressure on officials. Boycotts of various sorts are ongoing and sometimes successful. For example, RAN led a successful boycott against Burger King, claiming it was importing beef raised on rainforest-cleared land. More important is the tropical timber boycott promoted since 1989 by Earth First!, RAN and numerous other groups. One priority of these efforts has been to halt the export of unsustainably harvested timber from Sarawak in Malaysia.

The effort to save the rainforest upon which these people depend has led to other innovative tactics. One involves clearing 3-4 meter wide corridors through the forest and replanting them with native palm trees in order to demarcate and thereby protect Huaorani territory that the Ecuadorian government previously, but without adequate enforcement, had promised would remain inviolable. Such corridors prevent "accidental" colonization--no one can claim ignorance of the boundary. John Seed of the RIC steered funds raised in the U.S. toward such efforts, including $4,000.00 from the Foundation for Deep Ecology (Seed 1994). By 1993, with the assistance of solidarity activists, the Huaorani had planted 100,000 native palm trees in corridors 130 kilometers long. They further demarcated the boundary by erecting metal signs reading "Huaorani territory," marked with cross spears.

John Seed's passion to save the rainforests was not initially motivated by concern for forest dwellers. Now he finds himself deeply involved in indigenous human rights struggles. Once the battle for the rainforest brought him into close proximity to its peoples, he realized that without defending the people who had lived sustainably in it, the forest itself could not be saved. He is amused by the ironies of certain strategic innovations, such as cutting down portions of the rainforest to save it and its people.

The reason for this sense of irony is that Seed and other radical environmentalists have also become involved in "eco-forestry," sponsoring logging with <em>wokabout</em> <em>somils</em>. These portable saws are carried into the forest and used to cut and mill logs. This type of logging eliminates the need for roads, road building, and heavy equipment, that cause most of the destruction associated with large-scale commercial logging. The idea is to reduce the impact of logging while increasing local incomes, thereby eroding the incentive for local people to support industrial forestry. Seed has also sought funds to purchase<em>wokabouts</em> for ecoforestry projects in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the Solomon Islands (Seed 1990). In 1993 in PNG, such "ecoforestry" tactics were reported by RAN to be well underway (Belcher and Gennino 1993:33), leading Seed to solicit additional funds from the U.S. for another innovation, "to train participants in the care and use of waterbuffalo" for hauling the sawn timber from locations far from roads (Seed 1994).

The resistance to logging by the Penan and Iban tribes in Sarawak has probably drawn more radical environmentalist attention and solidarity action than any other popular ecological resistance movement. Given their willingness to risk arrest, it is not surprising that their resistance captures the radical environmental imagination. In a typical pattern, the rebellion of these traditionally nomadic, foraging peoples was fueled by the devastation of their land-base by logging. In 1982, "the [more] assertive Iban tribe blew up twenty-five bulldozers and logging trucks after loggers refused to leave their lands," repeating such tactics four years later (Scarce 1990:151). In 1987, the Penan began a series of anti-logging blockades which they have sustained well into the 1990s. These blockades were initiated on the advice of Bruno Manzer, a Swiss citizen who had been living among the Penan since 1984 (Snow 1994). By 1993, U.S. funds to feed the blockaders were being funneled to them through John Seed and his allies.

The blockades have inspired an international campaign to boycott Sarawakian timber (see Gedicks, this volume). Within the limits of their usually meager resources, Earth First!ers and other radical environmentalists have launched direct efforts to halt the export of forest products and to stimulate international outrage over the destruction of these forests and peoples. In 1989, thirteen international activists arrived in Sarawak, including Earth First! activists from the U.S., United Kingdom, Australia and Sweden, and a woman from "Robin Wood," a German radical environmental faction founded in 1982. Their objective was to champion the Penan and Dyak resistance. Six of them eventually locked themselves to 60-foot cranes, preventing for one day the loading of timber. Others spirited photographs out of the country for international distribution (Wilson 1991). Earth First!, RAN, the RIC, Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth, along with numerous smaller groups, have repeatedly demonstrated in protest of tropical timber imports into the U.S., UK, Australia, Germany and Japan. The boycott has reduced Malaysian timber exports, especially to Europe, and to some degree in the U.S.

Reporting on the indigenous resistance in Sarawak, Earth First! again attends to the nature-based spirituality of the Iban and Penan, implying that they share deep ecological perceptions: "As nomadic people [the Penan] need the forest for their food, medicines, and spiritual identity... They joined together [in these blockades] to speak for the ancient trees, for all life in the jungle and for their grandchildren" (Caruso and Russell 1992; Penan Leaders 1993).

No country has experienced greater diversity of popular ecological resistance than the Philippines. The struggle of Kalinga and Bontoc peoples to prevent a dam threatening to inundate their burial grounds and villages, and another struggle by farmers in the San Fernando province to stop and control logging, have gained international attention (see Porio in this volume and Broad and Cavanagh 1993, ch.4; Durning 1992).

Another indigenous struggle in the Philippines, this time against an energy project threatening a sacred mountain, has drawn the attention of the Earth First! journal. A solemn intertribal blood compact to defend their land, "even to the last drop of blood," was made among the indigenous Lumad communities in 1989. Further threats of armed rebellion were articulated the following year, "We are willing to take up arms, if necessary, to defend our rights to survive as a people of mother earth" (Broad and Cavanagh 1993, 34; cf. Durning 1992: 5-6, 38-39). Once again, a discussion in the <em>Earth First!</em> journal linked the resistance of the Bagobo elders (who come from one of the Lumad groups) to their nature-spirituality. The Bagobo view themselves as "the stewards of the mountain," reported the journal, "engaged by the spirits to protect the ecological and spiritual sanctity of the lands" (Fay and Barnes 1989).

<em>Earth First!</em> has also closely followed the native Hawaiian and environmentalist resistance to geothermal projects, which traditionally religious Hawaiians believe will injure Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess, whom they fear will retaliate (Faulstich 1990). This resistance has led to mass demonstrations including one resulting in 133 arrests (RAN 1990). After the withdrawal of the geothermal development company, the <em>Earth First!</em> journal proclaimed, "Pele's power is still strong" (Pele Defense Fund 1994).

Many other struggles are discussed in <em>Earth First!</em>, including those of the Karen, Karenni, and Moi in Myanmar (formerly Burma). These tribes have become so desperate in their efforts to preserve their teak forests that they have threatened to attack the loggers directly. Strictly non-violent movements, such as the Gandhian Chipko "tree hugging" movements of India, are also considered kindred movements (see McRae 1994; Akula in this volume; Taylor and others 1993:72-76; Schelling 1991; Berreman 1989; and Shiva 1988).

Earth First!ers also believed (or at least hope) that radical ecological resistance is proliferating in the industrial world. The rebellions in Eastern Europe are viewed as ecologically motivated (Scarce 1990, 141). Further evidence is found in the emergence of Earth First!-style actions in Czechoslovakia in opposition to the Gabcikovo dam project (see Kolenka 1993), in England where activists claim significant victories in resisting road building, and Switzerland where there have been violent anti-automobile demonstrations. And great hope is derived from the Celtic renewal and ecological resistance movements of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland (see e.g., Oxford Earth First! 1993; Burbridge and Torrance 1993; and McIntosh, Wightman and Morgan 1994, and Hill and others in this volume). Even more militantly, in the Fall of 1993 the "Earth Liberation Front" announced that it had established twenty clandestine cells which had already caused over two million British pounds damage to England's "earth rapers." The "elfs" proclaimed that they had emerged from the British EF! movement (which had not engaged previously in ecotage), and claimed they had coordinated "earth nights" across several continents on pagan holidays. They invited synchronized sabotage during the Halloween holidays (ELF 1993).

Any overview of Earth First!'s international efforts must mention the export of the "road show" strategy to Europe, and as of this writing, the founding and support of Institutes for Deep Ecology (by this and similar names) in England, Germany, Poland, and Russia. Such institutes of "applied deep ecology" are rapidly becoming centers for Earth First! style-political resistance and for promoting spiritual awakening of reverence and compassion for the natural world. Toward this latter end, the Council of All Beings and other newly-developed ritual processes are regularly conducted throughout Europe, especially in these countries. Such evangelical strategies will likely expand the deep ecology movement in Europe, as they have in the U.S.

In North America, the early 1990s witnessed increasing efforts by Earth First!ers to act in solidarity with this continent's indigenous nations. Such solidarity is expressed through support of groups such as the Apache Survival Coalition, which has been resisting telescope construction desecrating an ecologically sensitive mountain in Arizona, and the Coalition for Nitassian, which is comprised of Innu and Cree Indians and non-indian solidarity activists who have been resisting Hydro Quebec's hydroelectric dam projects (see Gedicks in this volume). Such groups multiplied rapidly in the 1990s.

Meanwhile, several new international environmental "umbrella" groups were formed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Arctic to Amazonia Alliance, and the Native Forest Network. Each has had significant involvement from Earth First! activists. Each is committed to native peoples and the biological integrity of the regions in which they live. Each hopes to nurture the recently evolving but fragile alliances between Indians and environmentalists in North America.

*** Critical questions arising from narratives of ecological resistance.

The preceding overview has introduced diverse narratives of resistance, from the outlines of Earth First!'s own stories, to accounts of international environmental resistance <em>viewed primarily through the perceptions and hopes of Earth First! activists,</em> supplemented by scholarly treatments where available and relevant. Through international networks of solidarity and resistance, diverse stories merge into a cross-cultural narrative about the global emergence of popular ecological resistance.

For those prone to environmental romanticism, it is easy to be swept up by such narratives where good triumphs over evil and communities of humans and non-humans find their way back to an Edenic harmony. Those willing to risk physical harm or personal liberty to right wrongs and confront us with a moral challenge deserve a fair hearing before they are incarcerated and we turn away indifferently. This book allows these storytellers to pose their questions. It also brings us full circle to the existential questions posed at the outset of this chapter: Do these stories move us? Do they make sense?

But these stories also raise further questions not usually pondered by those wrapped up in them. For example, do the storytellers assume facts not in evidence? Do they exaggerate their claims to conform them to their hopes? Is popular ecological resistance rapidly spreading across the planet? Is it significantly and increasingly animated by deep ecological spiritual sentiments, biocentric ecology, and radical politics? Or rather, are Earth First!ers and their kindred spirits projecting their own presuppositions and hopes onto movements that, although engaged in struggles with significant ecological dimensions, are neither deep ecological or even self-consciously environmentalist?

*** What is radical environmentalism?

The perceptions and hopes of such radical environmentalists pose an even more basic question that has inspired the inquiry in this volume, "What is radical environmentalism?" Moreover, we can rightly wonder whether, when discussing movements emerging from very different cultural and ecological environments, such terms of reference themselves promote or hinder understanding.

When I began research exploring international grassroots "environmental" movements, I did so in part because I wanted a comparative reference point for understanding what I was discovering in the North American Earth First! movement. I wanted to know whether Earth First! style activism was unique to the industrialized world, or was increasing around the world. As I learned more about the international movements that Earth First! tended to celebrate, it was <em>not</em> obvious to me that their perceptions were accurate, that kindred forms of an international "radical environmentalism" were actually emerging. There seemed to be significant discontinuities between activist narratives and perceptions, and other accounts of the same movements. Gaps in scholarly analysis exacerbated the difficulty of assessing such discontinuities. Clearly these phenomena deserved much closer scrutiny than most had heretofore received. Moreover, it was obvious that advancing our comprehension of contemporary ecological resistance would best be accomplished through an interdisciplinary and international effort. Such realizations led to an earlier collaboration (Taylor and others 1993) that has now culminated in this volume.

I hope that this chapter has evoked some of the curiosity that has inspired this collaborative inquiry. The reader can compare the type of ecological resistance described in this chapter with those described in the subsequent case studies, and ponder the variety of scholarly questions these diverse narratives pose. In the final chapters we will survey the global panorama of ecological resistance conveyed in these pages, reflect on the impacts of these movements, consider the viability and prospects for those resistance movements that are animated by various forms of nature-spirituality, and reflect on what if any patterns among them make it possible to speak of the international emergence of a global environmental radicalism. I also hope we will allow these narratives to pose their questions and claims directly to us as individuals--that we do not get so wrapped up in the fascinating effort to understand these movements as social phenomena that we lose sight of the high stakes, real-life dramas these case studies present. The struggles described in these pages matter, they are life and death struggles, they demand a personal response.

** Chapter 18: Popular Ecological Resistance and Radical Environmentalism

The diversity of popular ecological resistance movements serves as a caution against hasty generalization. Nevertheless, thoughtful critique of these movements does reveal certain trends and tendencies among many of these movements and the contexts from which they emerge. Such analysis allows consideration of the international foundations of popular ecological resistance, and also makes it possible to speak of the emergence and potential of a global radical environmentalism.

After a review of the trends and tendencies that can be discerned among these movements, this chapter will briefly return to questions posed at the outset of this inquiry, namely: What are the international impacts of these movements thus far? What are their likely future prospects? And finally, what are the problems posed by the emergence of popular ecological resistance that deserve greater in-depth scrutiny?

*** Trends and tendencies in the global emergence of popular ecological resistance

<strong>Fueling the flames of resistance: understanding causes and motivations</strong>

This volume (especially the chapters by Akula, Wisner, Tandon, Lorentzen, Lohmann, Porio and Hadsell) demonstrates that popular ecological resistance often originates in a desperate quest for survival as industrial processes threaten habitual modes of existence--and as people recognize that their well-being is threatened by environmental degredation. Most ecological resistance is indeed "<em>In Defense of Livelihood</em>," as suggested by Friedman and Rangan (1993). Discussing popular environmental movements in India, Ramachandra Guha concluded similarly that, among their many causes, "undeniably [the most important is] the deterioration of the ecosystem" and the social stresses which follow (1993:82). In less economically marginal contexts, resistance may be grounded more in concerns about health than subsistence, as Edwards's analysis shows. Nonetheless, threats to human livelihood and health provide the most important reasons for the global emergence and proliferation of popular ecological resistance.

Obviously, such motives are far from misanthropic. Indeed, a central justification for popular ecological resistance is the protection of the world for the sake of children (see especially Edwards, Porio, and Lorentzen, and also Broad and Cavanagh 1993:18; Gottlieb 1993; Tovey 1993:427). That such human-centered motives provide the most common basis for ecological resistance might surprise those radical environmentalists who believe that a <em>transformation of consciousness,</em> from anthropocentrism to biocentrism, is a prerequisite of ecological resistance and the eventual reconciliation of humans and nature. Our examination of the factors animating ecological resistance, however, demonstrates the inadequacy of blaming anthropocentrism as the primary cause of human indifference to environmental deterioration--because many on the front lines of such resistance movements are fundamentally anthropocentric in orientation.

Believing that consciousness is the most important ecological battleground leads some radical environmental activists to give top (but not exclusive) priority to promoting spiritual transformation through various forms of nature-based ritualizing (Seed 1994). These studies suggest that such strategies are unlikely to be more effective than ecological education combined with appeals to enlightened self-interest and concern for children, families, and communities. Through such appeals the defense of sustainable land-uses can be promoted and justified as self-defense--a practical version of the notion of inseparability pursued by the more spiritually oriented members of these movements.

To emphasize self-interest as the central underpinning of these movements is not to deny that that newly invented ritual processes are powerful means of evoking and deepening affective and spiritual connections to nature, including among those drawn to the deep ecology movement. Such ritualizing is prompting increasing numbers to reconsider their perceptions about the value of nature, their place in the natural world, and their lifestyles (Taylor 1993a, see also Grumbine 1992:233). And within the deep ecology movement, creating new ritual forms is often viewed as part of a broad effort to create new "tribes" and an ecologically sustainable culture. Desires for intentional community among those who perceive industrial cultures to be unfeeling, impersonal and bureaucratic play a significant role in fostering radical environmental countercultures and activism, especially in more affluent countries (Taylor 1993a & 1993b).

Similarly, to acknowledge that <em>basic human needs provide the most decisive impetus to ecological resistance</em> (especially in less affluent countries) is not incompatible with recognizing that moral and religious idea-motivations are deeply intertwined with the material motivations; or that <em>popular ecological resistance cannot be accounted for if moral and religious variables are overlooked</em>, or reduced to after-the-fact justifications. Wapner, Hadsell, Lohmann, Lorentzen, and Gedicks all made specific arguments along these lines, and Porio, Tandon, Akula, and Hill buttress our conclusion that human motivations are embedded in both material interests and ideal factors.

These chapters demonstrate a diversity of ways that moral and religious motivations help shape and contribute to the increasing "environmental" character of many popular movements. Sometimes moral claims to "self-determination" or "human rights" or "democracy" are advanced in quests for land and sustainable agrarian practices. Sometimes such claims to are buttressed with religious legitimations (see especially Hadsell for how liberation theology promotes such "secular" ideas). Sometimes religious ideas--such as natural resources are God's gift to humans who should prudently use and distribute them equitably--play important roles in these movements (see Hadsell, Lorentzen, Hill, and Porio). Sometimes the perceptions that the natural world is animate or that it embodies spiritual intelligences of one sort or another (see Gedicks, Akula, Lohmann, and Tandon), or newer forms of nature mysticism (see Taylor, Hill, Deudney, and Stark) convey a sense of duties toward nature that help inspire the defense or restoration of ancestral lands or traditional lifeways. Whatever the tradition, religions are malleable. In the face of environmental deterioration they have been mutating into forms capable of inspiring (or reinforcing) ecological activism, both by articulating ideals that participants find compelling (and thus legitimations for resistance) and by providing concrete institutional resources for ecological struggles.

As we have seen, ecological deterioration directly fuels popular resistance by threatening human well-being. Another reason ecological deterioration provides the decisive breeding grounds for ecological resistance is that it places additional burdens on women who were already disproportionately responsible for child rearing and the agrarian economy. Consequently, women tend to be more acutely aware of the direct threats posed by ecological deterioration. They also tend to know more than men about traditional, yet ecologically sustainable, agrarian alternatives. The contributions by Lorentzen, Akula, Wisner, Edwards, and Wisner underscore these dynamics, which have also been noted by many other observers (Banuri & Marglin 1993:11; Shiva 1988; Guha 1993:82; Tandon 1993).

Another important reason for the prominence of women in many popular ecological resistance movements is the displacement of men, who in another survival strategy, often migrate to cities (e.g., see Akula and Wisner), or whose interests conflict with women's objectives, even within broader popular movements (see Lorentzen). Gedicks also noted that another reason women are often important in indigenous environmental movements is their important roles in spiritual matters. Taken together, ecological decline, the place of women in local subsistence production, the absence of men, and spiritual responsibilities, all contribute to the widespread mobilization of women in popular ecological resistance movements. Consequently, women are decisively shaping many of these movements.

*** Popular analysis fans the flames of resistance

Examining how ecological deterioration threatens families, communities, and traditional livelihoods certainly helps account for the emergence of popular ecological resistance. By examining in more detail the way people in these diverse movements<em>explain</em><em></em> ecological decline--who and what they blame for their precarious situations--we can begin to comprehend why these<em>are</em><em></em> kindred movements--why and how they are <em>radical</em>.

The most common explanation for ecological deterioration and livelihood threats cited by those in popular ecological resistance movements is that the land has been stolen and abused by outsiders--either multinational commercial interests, or more commonly, commercial elites within the nation in question--interested in quick profits rather than ecologically sustainable land uses (see Edwards, Lohmann, Akula, Hadsell, Gedicks). Popular analysis often traces these realities to the arrival of colonial armies and the commercial enterprises that follow (see Wisner and Tandon). Popular analysis thereby links immiseration to the ecological and cultural impoverishment that began with the direct theft of mineral resources and continued with the replacement of traditional agri-culture with cash-crop monocultures. The resulting historic shift to international agri-business targeted for export, such analysis explains, reduced the availability of subsistence crops for local populations, enriched merchants and elite landholders, and eventually bankers and corporations, while displacing or marginalizing the original inhabitants. Such dynamics also produced cultural erosion and declining knowledge of the ecologically sustainable practices that had previously sustained local populations. Thus do rural "peripheries" come to be exploited by two "centers": financial and military powers in the industrialized world, and the metropolitan elites in less affluent countries who mimic in ideology and practice their mentors in the corporate, industrialized world.

Such criticism emerges from long-standing leftist analysis of economic imperialism. As this volume and related research demonstrates, popular ecological resistance in less-affluent countries often emerges from existing social movements already influenced by such analyses. Popular ecological resistance movements in Western industrial countries have also been strongly influenced by such social criticism, emerging as they do from the left-wing, peace and social justice movements (see Rudig and Edwards in this volume, and Gottlieb 1993). But there is something significantly new in the analysis employed by what we are calling popular ecological resistance movements--even those emerging from subcultures influenced by leftist theories of imperialism. It is the recognition of how resource scarcity exacerbates all the dynamics which accompany the global extension of market capitalism. Interestingly, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, an emphasis on resource scarcity (Erlich 1968; Meadows, et. al. 1972), was sometimes derided by leftists as a means whereby the affluent could deny equity to those heretofore denied the fruits of industrialization.

Of course, progressive analysis has long argued that global market capitalism and industrial growth rarely benefit peasants, workers or tribals, but rather guarantees their dispossession from ancestral lands. More recently, many leftists have begun to acknowledge that long-term industrial growth is not sustainable ecologically. This has forced a rethinking of many assumptions. If industrial growth is unsustainable, then it <em>cannot</em> benefit ordinary people. Like Gandhi, social activists increasingly recognize that only grief will follow if all marginalized people seek to follow the west's path of natural resource imperialism to development. It is obvious to these actors that large-scale hydro-electric dams benefit elites while exacerbating inequalities and destroying communities and livelihoods; and that commercial forestry is likewise a disaster, uprooting people, eroding soil, polluting water supplies and destroying fisheries (Guha 1993:82, 98; Broad and Cavanagh 1993:56-63).

The obvious consequences of unrestrained "development" reinforce perceptions that the land has been expropriated by outsiders who are using it up for their exclusive benefit, and that the further extension of international commerce works against local needs and interests. (The destructive impacts of modern commercial enterprise is also fostering a renewed appreciation of and experiments with traditional livelihoods, medicines, and agricultural practices, as shown by Wisner, Hill and others, and especially Tandon and Lorentzen). It is the realization of the connections between commercial development, ecological deterioration, and declining life prospects that lead to the "ecologization" of many popular social movements.

At this point we discern central common denominators emerging among popular ecological resistance movements. Increasingly they trace the theft and abuse of their lands, that now threatens their physical and cultural survival, to the enclosure of the commons (see especially Hill and others, Lohmann, Lorentzen, Akula, Tandon, and Gedicks). The appropriation of the commons by those who fenced it in, claiming it as their "private property," is seen as the necessary precursor to mineral theft, monocultural cash cropping or animal husbandry, road building, mining, commercial forestry, dam construction and other "development" projects that, taken together, degrade ecosystems, imperiling those they purport to benefit, while simultaneously making possible capital accumulation on a scale otherwise impossible. In 1992 <em>The Ecologist</em>(which had already played a pivotal role in advancing emerging green critiques of industrial societies that take growth as a central objective, and of the multilateral lending and development agencies who promote the extension of such destructive societies) published yet another influential critique. This time they attributed much environmental deterioration to the forces unleashed by the global enclosure process, while noting that resistance always accompanies assaults on commons regimes (<em>The Ecologist</em> 22(4).) This analysis has struck a responsive chord and has been rapidly and widely re-published.

Another common denominator to popular ecological resistance movements, and related to the critique of enclosure, is the rejection of economic growth and industrialization as desirable social goals.[[http://www.brontaylor.com/environmental_books/erm/erm_ch18.html#sdendnote10sym][10]] Dieter Rucht (1989), for example, finds that anti-industrial attitudes are increasingly widespread among environmentalists from many cultures, dividing them into radical and reformist camps. In this volume, Lorentzen, Tandon, and Akula well illustrate Hadsell's observation that the very idea of sustainability, originally borrowed from international sectors, is an increasingly important organizing principle for these movements. Indeed, Hadsell's point that "sustainability" serves as an important "ideological resource" for popular environmental movements can be generalized widely. Thus, within popular environmental movement analysis, an important trend is to view growth and industrialization as illusions offered by elites to keep ordinary people from defending and promoting appropriate and sustainable alternatives.

Finally, another critique common among popular ecological resistance movements in both affluent and less affluent countries is of the <em>scale</em> of governance. Popular ecological resistance movements seek to gain greater local autonomy (or preserve it) against the encroachment of national and international centers of power (see especially Hill and others, and Tandon). Thus a common denominator related to commons defense and restoration, and the rejection of industrial lifeways, is the fundamentally democratic impulse to bring decision making back to local populations. Observing such commonalities, Guha (1993) suggests that there is a remarkable congruence between the anti-industrialism and anti-imperialism of Gandhi and his followers, and the bioregional social ecology of ecotopian visionaries such as Murray Bookchin who promote decentralized economics, participatory democracy, and "appropriate" technology.

Despite the common critique of the scale of governance in the modern world, popular ecological resistance movements are seldom revolutionary. Most of these movements envision neither the overthrow nor the withering away of nation-states. They seek, rather, to wrest concessions from them, to protect or reclaim access to and control over land, and then to secure government compliance with such concessions. Those involved in popular ecological resistance movements are rarely utopian; they cannot afford to be. Even in contexts characterized by greater affluence, most activists recognize that, at least presently, their victories depend on federal legislation or legal rulings. Involvement in ground-level campaigns often tempers ideology with pragmatism. While radical environmentalists nearly always have anarchistic leanings and desire comprehensive decentralization, many know that the most important environmental victories have usually resulted from federal legislation or legal rulings which contravene the desires of local communities. This has been especially true in the United States, as well as in Australia, where large tracts of Tasmanian forest were saved by federal power, not public sentiment (Hay 1992:95). A need for pragmatism is likewise evident to activists who seek to prevent or reverse oceanic and atmospheric degredation--tasks which can be accomplished only through comprehensive international agreements, regulations and enforcement. The unlikelihood that such agreements will emerge through "politics as usual" is one key reason for the militancy of those radical environmental groups who attend to these issues.

Those involved on the front lines of ecological resistance generally recognize that concessions gained depend on the enforcement powers of the nations or states from which they were won; otherwise the elites whose privileges have been restricted may use their superior wealth and power to thwart popular victories. Moreover, even the most radical within popular ecological resistance movements recognize that the law enforcement agents they despise are often in a position to protect them from the illegal attacks of those whose interests they oppose.

*** Popular ecological resistance as radical environmentalism

By examining how those engaged in popular ecological resistance perceive the causes and consequences of environmental deteriorization we can better comprehend how they justify their militant and sometimes illegal tactics. Given their distrust of existing political processes and their relative lack of power, they experiment with a wide variety of oppositional tactics. But whatever the means chosen, the attempt to restore or defend commons regimes fundamentally challenges landowners' ability to control and exploit the land for their own benefit.

In practical terms, the broad priority of popular ecological resistance movements is to protect land from corporate expropriation. As popular environmental movements seek to defend or restore the integrity of ecosystems (sometimes believing they have intrinsic value, more often to preserve their own livelihoods and health) they also seek to restore commons regimes, even when they do not conceptualize their struggle using such terms. Only when the land is reclaimed or secured, movement activists are convinced, can ecosystem health be restored and sustainable lifeways recovered. Only when they control the land and its uses, these activists believe, is there hope for both it and themselves. To summarize,<em>renewing</em> <em>sustainable lifeways is the overall objective of popular ecological resistance movements, and this depends on the restoration of the common</em>s.

This priority is related to a second objective--not to seize the government--but rather to capture its authority over specific places and to prevent the wider extension of its power. Such ambitions derive from the perception that governments <em>are or represent</em> the very elites monopolizing scarce resources.

There is an additional trend that buttresses our argument that popular ecological resistance movements presage the global emergence of radical environmentalism. Increasingly, participants in these movements are expressing the literally radical idea that, to resolve our ecological predicament, we must "return to our roots"--specifically, our traditional agri-cultural roots. By supplanting non-native plant species (that were imported by imperial powers for cash-crop agri-business) with native species and more traditional agricultural practices, it is hoped healthy ecosystems can be restored (see Tandon, Lorentzen, Gedicks, and Lohmann, and Wisner in this volume, and Shiva 1988). In a similar way, other groups are resisting modern forestry and fishing practices, hoping to supplant them with more traditional ways of taking trees or fish or game (see Hill and others, and Hadsell). Such efforts challenge current social, economic, and environmental realities as fundamentally as do direct assaults on elite domination of land. Of course, such radical efforts to recover traditional lifeways usually depend on equally radical campaigns to recover and secure the land.

The preceding analysis suggests that despite great diversity, popular ecological resistance movements generally share <em>a common perception of their predicament</em> (environmental deterioration is threatening survival), <em>a common understanding of the causes</em> (outsiders have stolen the land and are abusing it for short-term profits, they are fencing out those who know best how to live sustainably, and nation-states are deeply complicit in this process), and <em>a common prescription</em> (the land must be taken from the abusers and managed according to traditional wisdom, supplemented judiciously by modern knowledge, while vigilance is maintained against those who would usurp the commons for private gain). Such shared perceptions unify and make clear the radical agenda of popular ecological resistance movements around the globe.

*** Ecological resistance meets reactionary response

Although specific situations give rise to particular political objectives, all ecological resistance movements call for a fundamental reordering of land uses, and thus of many political and economic relationships. In this sense, these movements are radical in orientation. This is not lost on those whose interests they threaten. Consequently, activists in ecological resistance movements have faced widespread reactionary violence, especially where elites fear such movements might succeed. Several case studies in the present volume provide examples of such violent reaction (see especially Gedicks, Akula, and Porio). However, these cases do not convey a sense of the extent of such violence.

In Brazil, where popular movements of rural workers and tribals have been particularly strong--where there have been repeated land invasions (or "recoveries") by peasants, and rubbertappers have confronted loggers, sometimes with hundreds of families, occasionally even tearing down their camps (Melone 1993)--the Pastoral Land Commission reports over 1,684 rural workers killed between 1964 and 1992 (Monbiot 1993). In the Philippines several of the most prominent popular environmental leaders have been murdered (Broad and Cavanagh 1993). In 1985, agents of the French government killed a Greenpeace photographer when they bombed a ship being equipped to disrupt a French nuclear test (Dalton 1993).

In 1990, two Earth First! forest activists were the targets of a car-bombing while they campaigned to save the California redwoods. Immediately afterward they were arrested and accused of carrying the bomb that injured them. They have a case pending against Federal and State law enforcement agencies for false arrest, and believe that law enforcement may even be complicit in the bombing itself (Bari 1994). We could detail other examples. As reactionary violence has escalated, so has the number of instances where members of popular ecological resistance movements threaten to "fight to the death" in defense of their lands and livelihoods. Some have already used violence. Others have turned to arson or forms of sabotage that place human lives at risk. The apparent escalation of a violent dimension to these conflicts is likely to continue because the conditions leading to ecological radicalism and reactionary violence show no signs of abating.

*** The impacts of popular ecological resistance.

Many impacts of popular ecological resistance movements have already been discussed in this volume. Here I will emphasize just a few of the major points. First, these movements have had an impact on public awareness of environmental issues and problems. They and their sympathizers (including anthropologists and filmmakers, human rights groups and rock stars) have contributed significantly to global awareness of the contemporary extinction crisis and other environmental calamities. As Litfin (1993:102) points out, and Wapner and Kamieniecki contend in this volume, in the absence of grassroots ecological resistance, it is unlikely that an urbanized humanity's understanding of such issues would have developed to the extent that it has (1993:102).

Second, these movements have had clear political impacts. By challenging the legitimacy of the state to determine who owns, controls and benefits from the land, by challenging its plans, intentions and bureaucratic-scientific expertise, by haranguing states for failing to address the threats posed by environmental deterioration, these movements are significantly reducing the range of autonomous state action--reducing the spheres where states can pursue their own objectives without consulting with and granting concessions to popular movements. Consequently, popular ecological resistance is already significantly contributing to the contemporary erosion of state power, and promises to do so further in the coming decades. As concessions are won, so is confidence that, sometimes the weak can thwart the strong, popular pressure can bring victories, and with vigilance, compliance with concessions can sometimes be secured. As Edwards explains, crude and rude protest often works, and as Lohmann adds, government environmental action generally <em>follows</em> popular action. Moreover, as both Edwards and Kamieniecki argue, the presence of radical environmental ideas and tactics makes moderate environmentalists seem reasonable by comparison, and more concretely, their obstructionist tactics sometimes provide time for moderates to gain concessions or victories by less militant means.

Third, these movements <em>have</em> altered the "constitutive rules" (Lipschutz and Mayer 1993) governing a variety of land use practices. Radical environmental groups have been effective in shifting environmental debate around the world from issues of aesthetics and wildlife conservation to more comprehensive and fundamentally challenging issues of biological and cultural diversity. An important part of this process was when grassroots environmental activists rejected the leadership of the mainstream environmental groups, embarrassing them by accusing them of being members of an elite leisure class, concerned only with their own enjoyment of visually spectacular places and "charismatic mega-fauna." Radical environmental groups argued instead that a priority should be placed on the conservation of biologically important ecosystem types.

Such challenges have contributed to some change in the public rhetoric and actual priorities of the mainstream groups as well to shifting rhetoric among many nations and international agencies. Of course some within these organizations were also arguing for such changes in priorities, but it is difficult to imagine that such changes would have occurred as they did without the militant challenges posed by radical environmental groups. Mainstream environmental groups in the U.S. are increasingly making the conservation of biological diversity a high priority. Even though substantive political commitment to biological diversity and the preservation of the global commons have not followed the rhetoric--the rules are changing. Governments and international agencies must now present at least a facade of concern about biological and cultural diversity. Even extractive enterprises such as the timber industry must now claim that their practices are sustainable and compatible with biological diversity. Moreover, they increasingly recognize that false claims could lead to legal challenges, fiscal problems, and public relations disasters. (The chapters by Hadsell, Gedicks, Wapner and Lohmann especially well demonstrate how "development" is increasingly threatened by popular resistance, international attention, and changing values that are often expressed in demands for environmental impact assessments and sustainable land uses.) These are relatively new political realities for which radical environmental movements can claim significant credit. As increasing numbers of social actors are forced to justify their practices as sustainable, popular environmental groups gain significant new leverage in their political struggles.

It should also be noted that many of the groups studied in this volume have won significant outright victories (Gedicks, Akula, Porio, Lohmann, Tandon). Nevertheless, as Gedicks points out, most such victories could be overturned in the future.

*** The future of radical environmental resistance.

Despite the repression radical environmental movements often face, it may be that they will continue to transform international politics in important ways. Moreover, all the available evidence suggests that the social conditions giving rise to these movements are worsening. Thus, it seems likely that the coming decades will witness further proliferation of popular ecological resistance. As Broad and Cavanagh explain, "The ranks of the opposition grow [with] the degredation of resources and peoples" (1993: 156). Yet there are obstacles to the proliferation and growth of these movements.

For example, it is likely that the conflicts they engender will be increasingly violent. One reason for this is that the conflicts fostered by radical environmental resistance seem destined to become intertwined with competing religious perspectives. This is partly because conservative Christians often believe that ecological resistance movements are animated either by forms of Christianity they consider false or misguided (such as Liberation Theology) or by pagan spiritualities they consider demonic. Moreover, many supporters of ecological resistance movements agree that these conflicts are grounded in fundamentally different religious worldviews--or as Banuri and Marglin (1993) put it, differing "systems of knowledge." It is not surprising to find religion deeply involved in conflicts such as these, since historically, economic interests nearly always become linked to religious worldviews and legitimations.

Also critical to the future of these movements is the role of international solidarity actors. As the contributions by Hadsell, Gedicks and Lohmann demonstrate, international actors make violent repression more difficult by making such violence visible. They also can provide important ideological, technical, and financial resources, help navigate legal processes, and counter government and corporate reassurances about "development" schemes. Yet the extent to which such international actors will contribute to the proliferation of popular ecological resistance remains unclear.

Equally important to the future of these movements will be the success of international alliances among these groups themselves. This will depend at least in part on how successful peoples alliances will be in gathering resources from international sectors and making visible their local struggles for self-determination, local land control, and sustainable lifeways. Many of the movements in this volume are clearly building the types of broad coalitions, addressing diverse but related issues, that are likely to be sustainable over time (see Kamieniecki and others).

*** Problems posed by the global emergence of popular ecological resistance

Radical environmentalism, in its many forms, poses fundamental questions about meaning and values. In dispute, as Dan Deudney has explained elsewhere in this volume, are answers about which if any religions are intellectually plausible in the modern era, an era informed by astronomy and evolutionary biology. A related question has to do with what knowledge systems, what worldviews, are <em>adaptive</em>, that is to say congruent with the long-term flourishing of life on this planet. This leads us back to our initial reflections on narratives--do any of the stories we have been confronted by in this volume move us? Do any of these stories of ecological resistance, international solidarity, spiritual and cultural renewal and revisioning, make sense?

Must the religious mysticisms of deep ecology and primal peoples be jettisoned--as Stark contends, and replaced by human knowledge about how to live sustainably and peacefully gained through the natural and social sciences? Or should we instead--as is argued by deep ecologists such as Max Oelschlaeger (1991), Gary Snyder (1990), David Abram (1995) and Lone Wolf Circles (1991)--return to the lifeways and spiritualities of small scale societies, with their perception of nature as full of spiritual intelligences and sacred places? Should we await new religions or return to traditional spiritualities, as Tandon suggests, allowing ourselves to be guided by "the ancestors" or spirit mediums? Or should we rather--as Deudney in this volume (and 1993), and Theodore Roszak (1992) propose--synthesize such primal spiritualities with more scientifically respectable notions like the Gaia hypothesis, and the "new physics," to create new religious stories capable of promoting the kind of trans-border (and trans-species) loyalty to the earth and her creatures that seems so desperately needed?

This volume illustrates that popular ecological resistance is fueled most decisively by the conflicts that arise from the extension of industrial processes globally and from the consequences of these processes where they have already been established. Yet this volume also shows that the success and impacts of social movements depends not only on how desperate are the material conditions giving rise to them. Nor do the impacts of these movements depend solely on the material resources they can muster. The success and impacts of these movements also hinges on how compelling are the ideas and stories that undergird these struggles. Among the unresolved questions emerging from our study of the global emergence of radical environmentalism are whether the ideas that are emerging from it, as amorphous and nascent as they may be, can provide the kind of inspiration able to sustain movements that face very long odds indeed. Another line of inquiry posed but unanswered by this volume is why movements of popular ecological resistance have not emerged elsewhere where environmental conditions, motivations, ideas, cultures, and so on, are comparable.

Although often originating in the quest to meet basic human needs, these movements nevertheless pose fundamental and enduring questions. They also offer as answers a host of new narrative amalgamations, based on both old and new perceptions and stories. It may well be that contemporary environmental disputes, as with many previous historical conflicts, will continue to be deeply embroiled in the differing ways people conceive of the sacred: Is the Divine located above or beyond the world? Is the Sacred located, instead, right under our feet, or in "our" place rather than "your" place? Ought we revere the Earth as Gaia, the one responsible for our own existence? Or rather, is the Divine in some sense the Universe itself, with all the entities sacred, because in a mysterious way they all participate in the life of God?

Complicating matters further, how in the world do stories based in astronomy and evolutionary biology fit in? Some suggest that the narrative of the unfolding of the universe provides a compelling story into which humans can locate themselves, discovering their proper place (Swimme and Berry 1992). Others discuss how evolutionary narratives themselves and ecological understandings of interdependence confer a proper perception of the human place in nature, helping people to see that they are but one part of the natural world, and not even the most important one at that, but nevertheless a part with unusual responsibilities to the whole (Milbrath 1993). How are we to weave such narratives into the host of other stories spun throughout our cultures? -- such as enlightenment stories of people learning to act rationally, universalizing moral principles, and promoting democratic polity? -- or stories of the historical unfolding of the idea of human rights? -- or stories depicting the kinship of all creatures?

Such questions lead to a perplexing ending for this volume exploring the global emergence of radical environmentalism and popular ecological resistance. Whatever the impacts, prospects and diverse forms these movements take--however we evaluate these diverse stories or the propositions embedded in them--whatever we conclude about who we are, where we fit, to whom we belong, and how we should live in the immense universe that surrounds us--these movements pose fundamental, radical questions. The answers can only be discerned through a life lived passionately and intelligently in their pursuit.

** Reviews

Reviews of Ecological Resistance Movements are listed below, followed by excerpts from them. Because the review in Mobilization provides an excellent summary of the volume and its arguments, I have provided the entire review, and lead with it.

 - <strong><em>The [London] Times Literary Supplement</em>, p. 15, 8 September 1995.</strong>

 - <strong><em>The Trumpeter</em> 12(4):201-03, by Bill Devall, Fall 1995.</strong>

 - <strong><em>Future Survey</em> 18(3):10, March 1996.</strong>

 - <strong><em>Choice</em> (Science and Technology) 33(8), by J.S. Schwartz, April 1996.</strong>

 - <strong><em>World Rainforest Report</em>, p. 24-25, by Thomas Harding, June 1996.</strong>

 - <strong><em>Capitalism, Nature, Socialism</em> 7(4):154, by Roger Gottlieb, December 1996.</strong>

 - <strong><em>Environmental History</em> 1(3):103-104, by Jan Laarman, July 1996.</strong>

 - <strong><em>American Political Science Review</em> 90(4):957-58, by Robert Paelke, December 1996.</strong>

 - <strong><em>Viewpoints: 1996-1997 Annual Edition</em>, p. 107, by Mark Peterson.</strong>

 - <strong><em>Wild Earth</em>, p. 96-97, David Johns, Winter 1996/97.</strong>

 - <strong><em>Mobilization: An International Journal of Research and Theory about Social Movements</em> <em>and Collective Behavior</em> 2(1):118-119, by Stella Capek, March 1997.</strong>

 - <strong><em>Worldviews: Environment, Nature, Culture</em> 1(1):90-92, by Anna Peterson, April 1997.</strong>

 - <strong><em>Environmental Ethics</em> 21(1): 97-100, by Randall Auxier, Spring 1999.</strong>

*** Reviews & Review Excerpts -- Fall 1995 to Spring 1999

**** <strong>Stella Capek in <em>Mobilization</em> 2(1):118-119, March 1997</strong>

This edited volume on global “ecological resistance movements” is one of a growing number of recent books on environmental movements that should prove useful to social movement scholars. The book is interdisciplinary as is the background of the editor (Taylor is Associate Professor of Religion and Social Ethics and director of Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh). It combines a variety of case studies, discourses, and theoretical reflections, and poses itself the difficult task of finding coherent patterns across a range of global grassroots environmental movements. Given the stunning variety of local movements and cultural assumptions framing them, making analytical sense of such movements can not be a neat or finished task. The book reflects this reality, yet takes a significant step forward in suggesting common patterns and contributing to an interdisciplinary understanding of the movements.

Even the term “popular ecological resistance movements” is problematic, as Taylor acknowledges in his introduction: it does, however, capture the grassroots nature of the movements, their often radical quality, and their link to an environmental sensibility that takes many different cultural <em>forms.</em> By proposing a reasonably inclusive term, Taylor and the authors in this volume push social movement analysis in a global direction, a move wholly consistent with the recent interest in transnational movements. Taylor lays out four lines of inquiry for the book: (1) a “descriptive tour of ecological resistance” (focusing on the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Africa, and Europe); (2) “ecological resistance and social-movement theory;” (3) “the challenges of” and (4) “the impacts and prospects of ecological resistance movements.” The book includes thirteen case studies, some of which focus on a particular country or region (for example, Vikram Akula’s “Grassroots Environmental Resistance in India,” or Ben Wisner’s “Luta, Livelihood, and Lifeworld in Contemporary Africa”). Others incorporate a comparative global perspective within one chapter (for example, Al Gedicks’s chapter on native resistance and the new resource wars). In a concluding section of the book, five chapters offer selected reflections on the movements. The reader encounters a wide variety of theoretical concerns, including sociological social movement analysis, a philosophical focus on ethics and postmodernity, a religious focus on the significance of Anthropocentrism and the role of the sacred, and a political concern with radical versus reformist movements.

This is a tall order. Achieving coherence in a book that combines so many discourses is a difficult, perhaps impossible, task. At the very least, it challenges the reader to transcend disciplinary boundaries. For example, social movement scholars accustomed to sociological frameworks will feel at home in Bob Edwards’ chapter on grassroots environmentalism in the United States, but will perhaps find chapters such as Daniel Deudney’s “In Search of Gaian Politics: Earth Religion’s Challenge to Modern Western Civilization” conceptually and substantively far afield from their usual concerns. This is not an argument against producing an interdisciplinary book. On the contrary, we need such efforts to advance our understanding of global environmental movements. The wide range in thematic content and approaches, however, produces an impression of uneveness. Some will be put off by the book’s collage-like quality, while others will find this appealing.

This being said, the book makes at least four important contributions: it documents significant new cases, it sharpens the theoretical debates surrounding environmental movements, it debunks ethnocentric concepts that are inappropriate for global analysis, and it seeks to generalize about social patterns at the global level.

Regarding the first point, the case studies (although theoretically framed in a variety of ways and uneven in the depth of empirical detail) serve an important documentary function. Students and others will find this volume -- with extensive explanatory notes appended to each chapter -- to be an important sourcebook on global environmental movements. Second, the book helps to sharpen theoretical debates surrounding environmental movements: for example, what does it mean to say, “African environmentalism?” What is the relationship between postmodernity and “deep ecology?” What do we mean by “radical” environmentalism? Environmentalism in Thailand debunks Western assumptions about the analytical importance of dichotomies such as state/market and anthropocentrism/ecocentrism, revealing how they confuse rather than sharpen theoretical understandings of global environmental movements. Such discussions are essential as social movement analysis moves to the global level.

Finally, despite the inherent difficulty of such a project, the book offers generalizations about global ecological resistance movements. In a concluding chapter, Taylor finds that most of these movements are motivated by a pragmatic struggle to “renew sustainable lifeways,” often-but not always-in conjunction with deeply held spiritual beliefs. Despite vast cultural differences, the mobilized groups share the following: First, a tendency to use the language of theft of the land by outsiders (particularly the violation and enclosure of a traditional “commons” -- a mobilizing point, incidentally, for some Latino ecological resistance movements left out of the summary of U.S. environmental justice movements). Second, the rejection of economic growth and industrialization as desirable social goals. Third, the effort to enhance local control in the face of “encroachment of national and international centers of power.” Taylor construes these moments as radical (as they challenge global capitalism, for example) but not necessarily “revolutionary” or “utopian.” Taylor and his collaborators conclude that a global movement with similar patterns is emerging, that it is causing significant social change, that its future success cannot be taken for granted, and that it can only be understood if discipline-specific and ethnocentric research categories are challenged.

This book has an ambitious agenda that is tempered by a realistic acknowledgment of the difficulties of generalizing across such complex and diverse cases. It makes an important contribution. It leaves us above all with open questions that should inspire further scholarship as we refine existing cases and reexamine the relevance of our theories in the face of global evidence.

**** <strong>Randall E. Auxier, Environmental Ethics 21(1):97-100, Spring 1999</strong>

. . . The book is far from over when the reader reaches the point of admitting to himself that he has oversimplified the world environmental situation, and has prematurely given himself over to certain concepts which may end up functioning as tools which first totalize the discursive practices among those who think about the environment, and eventually colonize the lifeworld in counter‑productive ways. Indeed, Taylor's world tour ends in Northern Europe and Great Britain by simultaneously opening a 200‑page, critical discussion of deep ecology, earth religions, and the effectiveness of radical environmentalism . . .

Taylor adopts and maintains solid neutrality, which places upon the reader the burden of either rethinking her most cherished “environmental” concepts or not doing so. Similarly, Taylor places the activist in a posture of either reflecting upon whether chaining herself to a bulldozer is really what she ought to be doing. Certainly this volume left the present writer thinking that his environmental viewpoint is in need of a major overhaul—of the sort which only an <em>actual</em> trip around the world is likely to make possible. The fact is that in privileged nations, environmental philosophers and activists do not spend enough time in the actual places and with the actual people regarding whom they have fantasized a certain solidarity, and until they do, they might wish to adopt a slightly less paternalistic and demeaning attitude towards these peoples and why they engage in the acts of resistance they do . . .

In terms of highlights . . . especially impressive chapters are turned in by Al Gedicks, Larry Lohmann, Emma Porio and Bron Taylor. . . . I recommend this book very highly. Its use in the classroom ought probably to be restricted to secondary readings for introductory classes in environmental ethics and philosophy, but it would be a suitable main text for more advanced seminars in deep ecology, environmental philosophy, and social movement theory. In sum, the book is an outstanding achievement in both academic editing and environmental philosophy.

**** <strong>Anna Peterson in Worldviews: Nature and Culture 1(1): 90-92</strong>

. . . This volume . . . is a unique resource for scholars, students, and general readers interested in social movements and/or environmental ethics. . . . Ecological Resistance Movements begins with an introduction by Taylor [and] this information alone makes the book valuable. . . . Overall, Ecological Resistance Movements is a needed and well-done contribution to the literature on global popular environmental movements. While much work remains to be done both in case studies of actual movements and in theoretical reflections on broader issues, this volume represents a valuable starting place.

**** <strong>Robert Paelke in the American Political Science Review 90(4):957-58, December 1996</strong>

. . . This book offers a series of articles about environmental organizations that are characterized as ‘radical and popular’ across virtually the whole of the planet . . . There is a very useful emphasis on environmentalism in poorer nations. Indeed, the combination of locales, organizations, and events covered in this volume makes this a useful addition to the literature on contemporary social movements. . . There is . . . no single volume that reviews so comprehensively and so globally the range of emerging and radical environmental organizations. . . . What this volume offers that is distinctive is an intelligent and truly global assessment of environmental actions and organizations that are not readily found.

**** <strong>Roger Gottlieb in Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 7(4)154, December 1996</strong>

. . . This book might serve as kind of a discursive mood elevator for depressed radical environmentalists -- especially if you find yourself locked into depression over the extent of global environmental devastation and the relatively weakened state of the environmental movement in the West. . . . This volume would be terrific for a course in environmental politics or global environmental issues. And while it doesn’t paint a rosy picture, it brings home the depth and breadth of worldwide opposition to the environmental crisis.

**** <strong>David Johns in Wild Earth, Winter 96/97</strong>

<em>. . . Ecological Resistance Movements</em> is an important book that deserves the attention of conservationists because it offers a much needed global assessment of grassroots and environmental movements . . . it does accomplish what it sets out to do, and does so well. We come away with a much improved picture of movements around the globe that call themselves ecological or environmental, and we have the beginning of a framework for understanding them”

**** <strong>Mark Peterson in Viewpoints 1996-1997; p. 103</strong>

. . . Bron Taylor’s thoughtful selection of essays on emerging and popular ecological resistant movements is a valuable contributions to current discussion on environmentalism. . . . The text pursues four lines of inquiry: descriptions of particular movements in their own terms, the use of social movement theory to analyze their dynamics, discussion of how these movements challenge the underpinnings of the cultures in which they occur and, finally, the effects these movements achieve and challenges they face. . . . Taylor’s own closing summation pulls together threads from throughout the anthology and draws it into a coherent whole. . . It may be that Taylor’s personal experience with Earth First! that lends his essays the lively immediacy, relevance, and clarity often lost in scholarly work on current social movements. This same immediacy seems to have motivated his selection of contributors. . . . the effect is an enjoyable, interesting, and useful text, not only important to scholars . . . but accessible to the general reader as well.

**** <strong>Jan Laarman in Environmental History 1(3): 103-4, July 1999</strong>

. . . Taylor’s concluding chapter is a good summary of complex issues and questions, and a fifty-page references section, along with a respectable index, make the volume a valuable research guide. To Taylor’s credit, the approach throughout the book is analytical rather than insipidly romantic. A few authors glorify their characters, but overall this book is not about white hats fighting black hats. We who work in forestry . . . and other resource professions have trouble with radical environmentalists . . . But in this book, one learns that not all radicals are misanthropes or egomaniacs. If, instead, radical truly means “to grasp things by the root” [p. 301], then there exists a reasonable chance for fruitful discussion.

**** <strong>Future Survey 18(3):10, March 1996</strong>

Essays on grassroots environmental groups fighting against environmental degradation . . . concludes that popular ecological resistance movements have had an impact on public awareness of issues, and have significantly contributed to the erosion of state power, promising to do so further in coming decades.

** Ordering

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