New Models for Struggle: Environmental Decision Making Through Consensus

David N. Pellow

IPR working papers from Institute for Policy Resarch at Northwestern University

Abstract: Recent research in environmental sociology indicates that environmental movement activists continue to engage in radical, disruptive, and adversarial tactics to achieve their goals. In this paper I propose that environmentalists are using a new form of protest, specifically consensus-based decision-making. This new form emerged in response to profound changes in the political economy and ecology that have taken place during the last three decades. Consensus-based environmental decision-making is one method these actors are employing to find ways to achieve cleaner ecosystems and socioeconomic stability. Although consensus-building among actors of vastly unequal resources would appear to challenge traditional adversarial models of decision-making, I argue that it does not. Based on an analysis of interviews with environmentalists experienced in consensus-building, I conclude that activists in fact maintain an adversarial ideological stance toward industry and state actors and they subsume this stance under a more cooperative, 'consensus' framework. This is a form of 'infrapolitics'Ña covertly subversive act undertaken by subjugated groups in the presence of more powerful actors.

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wop:nwuipr:96-34

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