21st Century American Environmental ideologies: a Re-evaluation
Date
2017-11-29
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Routledge
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Around the turn of the century, myriad books and articles – from
academics, journalists, organizational leaders and grassroots
activists – explored the state of American environmentalism,
outlining ideological antagonisms and tracing the contours of
possible twenty-first century trajectories. In recent years, however,
there have been few such analyses, and those that do exist continue
to rely on the ideal types of the past. This article explores the
shifting ideological contours of American environmentalism by (1)
detailing how extant works categorize American environmental
ideologies, and (2) employing discourse and content analysis of
sixteen American environmental organizations to consider whether
existing ideal-types capture the ideological variability driving
contemporary environmental practice. It concludes by outlining six
twenty-first century American environmental ideal-types: wilderness
preservationism; liberal environmentalism; traditional environmental
justice; techno-ecological optimism; socio-ecological progressivism;
and socio-ecological radicalism. The article argues that the latter three
ideological variants signal an ontological shift that cuts to the core of
environmental practice.
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Citation
John Hultgren (2018) 21st century American environmental ideologies: a reevaluation, Journal of Political Ideologies, 23:1, 54-79, DOI: 10.1080/13569317.2017.1397916