Description
In recent years, environmentalism in the US has increasingly emerged at the community level, focusing on local ecological problems. Correspondingly, the American environmental movement has exhorted its supporters to 'think globally' but 'act locally'. The authors examine this modern environmental mantra by analysing the opportunities and constraints on local environmental action posed by economic and political structures at all levels. The difficulties involved in local activism are explored in three case studies - a wetlands protection project, water pollution of the Great Lakes, and consumer waste recycling. The final chapter then reflects on the challenges facing citizen-worker movements in each case study, and concludes that, despite the inherent difficulties, any successful attempt at mobilisation must have a local component.
Chapter
Stakeholders in the Transnational Treadmill
Contesting Locally in the Transnational Terrain: A National Environmental Organization and Wetland Watchers as Exemplars
Local Movements and Extralocal Production: The Machinery of the National Treadmill
Local Movements and Extralocal Production: Re- Engineering the Transnational Treadmill
Environmental Localism versus Political-Economic Transnationalism
Conclusion: The Rest of the Book
2 The Terrain of Environmental Conflicts: Local Wetland Watchers and a National Movement Organization
Origins of the Local Wetland Protection Project
The Road to Conflict: Transportation and Housing versus Wetland Protection in Suburb, USA
Unraveling Resource Planning Conflicts in Suburb, USA
The Hierarchy of Dialectical Conflicts over the Use of Wetlands
Resource Allocation and Social Inclusion Practices: Regulating Access by Openly Managed Scarcity
Resource Allocation Processes: Balancing the Stakes via Managed Scarcity
Social Inclusion Practices: Limited Openness to All Stakeholders
The Terrain of Natural Resource Conflicts: Diversity and Continuity in Career Trajectories
Cases of Successful Mobilization
Cases of Failure to Mobilize
Contexts and Local Mobilization: When Markets and Democracy Clash
Conclusion: The Political Economy of "Think Globally, Act Locally"
3 Slights of Hand: How Public Participation in Remediation of Water Pollution Fails to Trickle Down
The Devolution of Nation-State Interests in Transnational Water Quality
The State of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River Basins
Local Case Studies: Governments, Citizen-Workers, and Environmental Conflict
Weak Government Efforts in Remote Communities
Federal Control at Nonremote Single-Polluter Sites
Public Participation in Industrial Centers
Conclusion: Political Realism: Is There a Trickle-Down of Public Participation from the Binational Level?
Local Governments and Growth Coalitions
Government Environmental Agencies as Extensions of Citizen- Worker Movements?
National and Regional Governments' Interests in Environmental Remediation
The Constricted Role of Local Governments
Government, Polities, and Water Pollution: A Final Word
4 Recycling: Organizing Local Grass Roots around a National Cash-Roots Policy
Contextualizing Recycling
An Overview: What Happened?
What Might Have Been? Reuse versus Remanufacturing
From Past Practices to Current Policies: The Rise of Recycling in Chicago
Local and Multinational Actors: Utopias versus Dystopias
The Institutionalization of a Bad Policy: The Ambivalent State and the Misled Movement
Competing Models in Recycling Policy: Reform and Resistance
Elaborating a Social Concept of Ecological Scarcity
Capital Flows and Production Transformations: The Transnational Dimension
Conclusion: Channeling Citizen-Worker Resentments
5 From Local to Transnational Strategies: Toward a Model of Sustainable Mobilization
Political and Economic Resistance to Local Environmentalism across the Three Empirical Studies
Land-Use Conflicts: NEO and the Wetland Watchers
Waste Disposal Issues: Source Reduction, Product Reuse, and Waste Recycling
Reflecting on the Empirical Studies
Incorporating Localism within the Transnational Political Economy
Mobilization to Contest Transnational Capital Flows: The Contemporary Challenge
Key Dimensions of Sustaining Resistance: Moving from Local to Extralocal Movements
Political Will: Pressures and Counterpressures
Exploring the Dimensions of Local Political Will
Political Mobilization and Information Control
Resistance from Outside Treadmill Organizations: Citizen-Workers' Networks as "Canaries in the Mine"
Resistance from within the Treadmill: Vulnerabilities of Treadmill Organizations and Actors
The Recurrent Problem of Overproduction
Losers in Transnational Treadmill Competition
Stress and Disaffection within Transnational Treadmill Organizations
Local Environmental Struggles
：Citizen Activism in the Treadmill of Production
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