“We are nature defending itself”: the Sense of Belonging to Nature
among Urban Environmental Activists
MSc in Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Amsterdam Anna Sophie van der Vliet
UvA Student ID: 12304395 Date: July 1, 2020 Word Count: 24,025 Supervisor: Oskar Verkaaik
Abstract
This paper is about the feeling of belonging to nature among urban environmental activists and how the internal structures of the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement mimic the systematic societal change the group envisions; it is about feeling, thinking, and doing. Coming from a lifestyle tied to global economic systems, rather than local ones, industrialized society, according to Milton, tends to have a physical and emotional distance from the natural world which is echoed in behavior (consumer, lifestyle, voting, etc). If it doesn’t, nature is seen for its aesthetic and spiritual benefits rather than for its inherent value. The culture of environmentalism as a subset of broader society seeks to eschew this distance not only to natural resources but also to humans — environmentalism within XR places an incredibly strong link between community and environmental justice. As for the worldview through which people place value on nature, this matters less than expected among Amsterdam-based activists. What is important is a positive affect displayed by the people within the research population towards nature and community. The regenerative culture within XR, alongside principles of nonviolence and non-hierarchy within the movement mimic the sustainable cyclical process of renewal within the natural world, and should the movement achieve its goals, would be transposable into broader society to achieve climate justice.
“We are nature defending itself”: the Sense of Belonging to Nature among Urban Environmental Activists
Abstract 1
Motivation 3
Theoretical Framework 5
Nature and Culture 6
The “Dwelling Perspective” 8
Affect Theory 9
Setting and Research Population 11
Setting: Extinction Rebellion Background 11
Setting: Extinction Rebellion History 13
Research Population 14
Method 16
Operationalization 18
Ethical Considerations 20
1. Roots: Feeling 21
“I feel more alive in nature...” 22
Cultural Underpinnings of Environmentalism as Reflected by Extinction Rebellion Amsterdam 26
Loving Nature and Community 29
COVID-19 31
2. Bole: Thinking 33
Perspectives 34
Does it matter? 36
Nature as a place for community 38
Communal space 39
3. Branches: Doing 42
Regenerative Culture 44
Nonviolent Direct Action (NVDA) 47
Non-hierarchy and Decentralization 48
A culture of care 53
In Conclusion 56
Works Cited 58
Academic 58
News and Websites 60
Fieldwork 63
Social Media 64
Motivation
It's my first time venturing "into the field", that is to say, an Extinction Rebellion gathering: a "Heading for Extinction and What to Do About it" introductory talk in Amsterdam Oost. It's about 18:00 on an icy January evening, and I get off the tram in a quiet neighborhood.
There is no clear way to tell the location of the meeting; no people standing outside, no sign on the door. I see an older man walking in front of me; hiking boots, thick wool sweater and — most importantly — a backpack with an hourglass pin, the symbol for Extinction Rebellion, on the lapel. I wait a few seconds and follow him into the otherwise unmarked 22b, where, according to Facebook, the meeting will take place. The man goes down some stairs, through a dim,
low-ceilinged tunnel, out into a courtyard strung with prayer flags, and finally into a back building. I continue to follow him at an unsuspicious distance, meeting nobody else along the way. At the threshold of the building, the cold, dark atmosphere outside is contrasted by a wall of gezellig energy; inside, there are tables set up cafeteria-style, and about 30 people of mostly student-age (lots of vintage sweaters, so many colors!) are chatting and eating soup. It wasn't my plan to join the meal, but a nice girl asks me if I want some so I thank her, make a donation, and sit for two minutes until an announcement is made that the meeting in the next room is starting. I feel a little awkward about being the only person there who had seemed to arrive alone. Everyone else came in pairs or small groups. (General Meeting 1)
Going into this situation, I felt a sense of smugness at my image of activism being validated at every step; the hiking attire of the old man, the anti-squat location of the meeting, the mass of secondhand sweaters, collective soup-eating… lovely as it was, it also felt like a caricature of an environmentalist gathering. Where this image
comes from, I’m not sure; perhaps it is some relic of “hippie culture” regurgitated through films and movies, stereotypes of vegetarian liberal arts students (of which I am one), or geitenwollensokken , a Dutch slang term I1 recently learned from my colleagues which refers to well-intentioned but somewhat impractical adherents to alternative lifestyles. Along with visual stereotypes, I am aware of a sentimental one; that “we are nature defending itself”. I first came across this idea, which became so central to my fieldwork, in a photo of a protest 2 sign from an Extinction Rebellion protest in London in 2018. This idea that we are all connected, that we are part of nature, that earth is part of us as much as we are a part of it is not something new — it is repeated often, but it is not very clear in terms of the exact composition of this relationship and what it means for environmental movements.
My topic, urban environmental activism and the sense of belonging to nature, is one that hits very close to home for me. Like many in my bubble and beyond, I care deeply about the environment and can abstractly say that I 3 feel like a part of it — but why do I care?
The reality is that I’ve lived in major cities my whole life: New Delhi, New York, Amsterdam, Geneva, Amman, and Tokyo. Despite my metropolitan upbringing, I spent a lot of time outside — camping and hiking outside of these cities was an integral part of my childhood. Still, being “in nature” was always a part of partaking in a leisurely activity, not a focal point of my existence. My motivation for this thesis stems from a curiosity about my own feeling of connectedness to nature, and by extension, my interest in protecting the environment through both small personal acts and more committed participation in activism. How connected exactly can I be to nature when, at the same time, I feel like I barely know what it is? Moving away from the existential questioning of my own relationship to nature, I want to know more about what this care for the environment looks like in practice. What are the feelings that underlie activist culture? Is there a common perception of the environment among activists who, like me, are based in large cities? How does the combination of an emotional connection to nature and what might be considered a leisurely acquaintance with it translate into action?
1 “Goat-wool socks” in Dutch
2The photo is copyrighted, but if you image-search “We are nature defending itself Extinction Rebellion” online, it will be one of the
first images you see
3 Internationally-oriented, left-leaning, educated
The research question of this thesis is founded upon the assumption that there is a connection between feeling close to nature and having the drive to care for the environment. But what is nature in the first place, especially when you’re surrounded by city on all sides? When your taste of nature in everyday life might be a park you walk through on your way to work or a tree outside your window? Questions like these make me want to find out more about people’s relationship to nature, and how they can reconcile a strong affinity for it while perhaps not knowing what “it” is in the way that people who are more intimately embedded in it do. Activism seemed like the most obvious channel through which to weigh the concept of caring for nature against the dynamic of city-dwellers feeling like a part of a conceptual all-encompassing ecosystem. How do urban-based environmental activists see the world, and what changes do they wish to see permeate general society as a result of their advocacy? Extinction Rebellion Amsterdam seemed like a good forum to explore how connecting to nature informs the kinds of activism metropolitanites partake in.
Then, societal motivation comes in. For the sake of brevity, I will refrain from elaborating on the many ways that human activity is disrupting biodiversity, food security, ocean acidification, water levels, and climate stability. I think the general consensus among governments and citizens alike is that behavioral change is needed. Studies have demonstrated that environmental education and mindfulness lead to increased levels of responsibility in environment-related behaviors (Barbaro and Pickett 2016). Knowing this is already a good thing, but how can we take it a step further by fostering a culture of care, and to what extent is activism involved in spreading this culture and creating societal reform? I also want my work to reflect the continuous move in academia away from the separation of nature and culture and, and towards a deep ecology philosophy that acknowledges the feedback loop between people and their environments without leaning on simplistic stereotypes of city dwellers being or unfamiliar with what nature is. How I will do this is outlined in my theoretical framework.
Theoretical Framework
Research Question:How does the feeling of being connected to nature inform the practices and goals of Extinction Rebellion Amsterdam?
Sub Questions:
1. How do urban environmental activists describe their connection to nature? 2. How do these people* experience nature in their metropolitan existence? 3. How does this relate to how people* perform environmental activism?
*“These people” and “people” refer to the study population of “urban environmental activists” who are part of the Extinction Rebellion movement in Amsterdam. More on this in the Setting subchapter.
Keywords:
activism, affect, care, nature culture
Nature and Culture
Descola and Palsson, in their 1996 overview of anthropological perspectives in Nature and Society,profess that anthropologists maintained an interest in nature “from early on” (Descola and Palsson 1996, 1-2), starting with the “central dogma” that nature was in opposition to culture — the dualist view” (p.2). Nora Haenn and Richard Wilk, in their 2006 summary of the Environment in Anthropology agree in stating that how people relate to their environment has been of interest to anthropologists since “the discipline’s earliest days” (Haenn and Wilk 2006). In the early 1990s, Milton roughly defined “the environment” as “the complex of natural phenomena with which we share the universe and on which we depend” (Milton 1993). In 1999, Paul Little determined the phrase “the environment” to be confusing in the field of anthropology because of its reference to nature as well as “the cultural and biophysical elements [of a] particular human group”(Little 1999). According to Little, the study of the ways in which different cultures visualize and conceptualize the “relationship to their human and biophysical environments has served to relativize the Western concepts of nature and culture” (Little 1999, 270). Some cultures, for example, metaphorize the relationship between humans and nature as sexual, while others view it as one between parent and child (think of the common phrase “Mother Nature”) (Bird-David 2003) and others view nonhuman animals as equal contributors to wider laws which govern all living things (Little 1999). Still separate to these understandings of human and nature are the anthropological debates of environmental determinism versus possibilism, the first of which posits that mankind’s environment determines its culture, and the latter of
which argues that humanity’s environment makes its culture possible (Haenn and Wilk 2006, 3). Despite these many conceptions of humanity’s relationship to its environment, the nature-culture divide has, amongst anthropologists, been one of the more persistent dichotomies, enduring where other simple binaries such as “mind-body [...and] individual-society” have not (Descola and Palsson 1996). All of these different views of the relationship between humans, their cultures, and their environments culminates in the study of environmental anthropology and ecology. Descola and Palssson, and other environmental anthropologists since, have worked to undo the dichotomy by proposing a continuum of nature and culture through advocating the integration of the formerly separated studies of ecology and culture, a step they perceived as a necessary response to “[...] global environmental problems, modern information technology, the greening of public discourse, and the redrawing of disciplinary boundaries [...]”(Descola and Palsson 1996, 64).
Exemplified by the imaginary separation between human and nature, and the more recent eschewment thereof, humans “impose their symbolically constituted designs upon the external world” (Ingold et al. 1992), meaning that in a sense, the environment is devoid of meaning for humans until people, through their culture and perception by way of interaction assign it not only meaning, but also status. This status has historically manifested itself in the so-called Western world as the dualistic worldview which separates the interior selves of subjects from their “exterior conditions of existence” (Ingold et al. 1992, 40), creating the nature-culture divide. But how to escape what Ingold calls the “conceptual prison” (Ingold et al. 1992, 40) of the nature-culture dichotomy? Perhaps it starts with, as Ingold suggests, understanding that humans not only construct the environments in which they dwell, but they also design them; in the case of urban environmental activists especially, people lean into this perception by seeing the environment as “‘neutral objects’ waiting to be ordered in terms of a cultural project” (Ingold et al. 1992, 44). This corresponds to the distinction between building and dwelling. Are people the overlords of the natural world, as befits a “building” perspective? The stewards thereof? At mercy to its wills? Or is it a more symbiotic, “circle of life”/ “dwelling”-type relationship?
My fieldwork overall demonstrated an increased likelihood of “belonging to nature” feelings among the target group of activists. However, each person’s construction of their own and humanity’s relationship to nature (or, to omit the divide, to itself) varied slightly in its construction. For example, my very first interview, with a Dutch man active in Extinction Rebellion for the past year, my interviewee had a strong sense that he and other people 7
were a part of the environment, but when I started to probe, admitted that conceptualization thereof was an abstraction of his feelings towards and experiences “in” nature (Interview L). He mentioned that he tried to “be in nature” for one hour every day, but when it came to defining nature and our consensus that the less beautiful aspects of the urban environment could also constitute nature, he conceded that what he had originally meant was “green spaces” and being around plants (Interview L). He told me that he and many of his peers had a blueprint of what nature is, and while the philosophical idea that “we are all part of nature” is one that he believed in, its application in practice was difficult to pinpoint.
Even though the manifestation of my interlocutors’ relationship to nature was difficult to define, what mattered was that a relationship existed at all. Research in the field of psychology, notably that done by Frantz and Mayer in their paper “The Importance of Connection to Nature in Assessing environmental Education Programs”, shows that with regards to human-nature relationships, “a sense of ‘we-ness’ makes protective behavior more likely” (Frantz and Mayer 2014, 5) and that “expanding one’s sense of self to include another does lead to more empathetic and protective behavior [towards that entity]” (Franz and Mayer 2014, 5). Barbaro and Pickett also acknowledge this in stating that increased mindfulness among people led to an increase in the feeling of connectedness to nature among subjects, which in turn led to an increase in pro-environmental behavior (PEB) (Barbaro and Pickett 2016). In a reflection of this framework, discussions with my interlocutors relied heavily on feeling and perspective; even if people I talked to did not necessarily have the right words to explain their connection to nature as a cause-and-effect motivator for activism, the process of feeling as a precursor for doing was clear.
The “Dwelling Perspective”
Most studies regarding the feeling of being connected to something and the resulting increased empathy towards and action for that “something” occupy the field of psychology and sociology (Frantz and Mayer 2014, 88, Milton 1993, 6). Milton agrees in asserting that the relationship between anthropology and environmentalism is one that is constantly evolving, and that it is unique from other academic fields in that “the study of culture can feed back into the object of its analysis and help to direct cultural change” (Milton 1993, 7); this is demonstrated 8
in how the cultural definition and feeling of “oneness” with nature (or lack thereof) corresponds to willingness to partake in group action. Peoples’ perception of the environment from the starting point of “building” versus “dwelling”, as outlined in Ingold’s essays “Culture and the perception of the environment” (1992) and “Towards a Politics of Dwelling” (2005) is partly used to outline the philosophical conceptions of peoples’ relationship to nature in this paper.
Ingold’s philosophy on building and dwelling, unlike traditional forms of anthropology, eschews the historical boundary between nature and culture and puts humans in the “same space that is inhabited by creatures of all kinds, human and non-human” (Ingold 2005, 501). The dwelling perspective finds similarities in not only between nature and society, but argues that they are closely related; “social life has always been part and parcel of ecological life, if indeed the two can be distinguished at all” (Ingold 2005, 501). Within the political ecology that is “dwelling” versus “building”, power dynamics are constantly at play; while the latter (“building”) encapsulates an existence wherein humans are the masters and the builders of their lives, the former (“dwelling”) carries life through it (Ingold 2005, 501). Dwelling is a perspective in which “feel at home in the world”, while acknowledging that this feeling is not always pleasant or comfortable (Ingold 2005, Epilogue). While not necessarily a symbiotic view of nature, the dwelling perspective is one which sees “[...] all creatures, human and non-human [as] fellow passengers in the one world in which they all live, [which] through their activities continually create the conditions for each other’s existence” (Ingold 2005, Epilogue). It is this perspective to which I believe environmental activists within my study population, Extinction Rebellion Amsterdam, subscribe. Their ideology, one which is similar to Ingold’s idea that there exists no border between nature and society, is reflected in the group’s demands for society to adapt its behavior in order to serve the best interests of nature and of other people. This is not to say that building has no place in within dwelling; in fact, building falls under dwelling in that “producing life encom passes the production of the material means by which it is carried on” (Ingold 2005, Epilogue) So, where exactly does the “feeling a sense of belonging” fit into this discourse of dwelling, environment and society?
Affect Theory
Operationalizing feelings enters the theoretical framework in the form of affect theory. Feeling and affect are not one and the same, but they, along with emotion, are closely related (Shouse 2005). While “feelings are personal” (Shouse 2005) and emotions are the social projection of feelings portrayed by actors, affect is “a moment of unformed and unstructured potential” (Shouse 2005). It is this unstructured potential which adds to my research in that it may drive peoples’ motivations to act or engage in activism. How peoples’ affect toward the idea of themselves as extension or a part of nature and community influences their reasons for engaging with Extinction Rebelion. In this vein, Silvan Tomkins believes affect to be the “primary innate biological motivating mechanism, more urgent than drive deprivation and pleasure, and more urgent even than physical pain” (Tomkins 2014, 163). This, to me, is a reinforcement of the idea that a close identification between activists on one hand and environment on the other means that rebels are more open to engaging in behaviours such as4 5 civilly disobedient acts for their cause. If I can uncover an affective relationship between individuals, the activist community, and the environment, my research question is one step closer to being answered.
It is with this in mind that the thesis is directed toward uncovering the relationship between sentiment towards and perception of the environment and action (White 2017). Affect theory, according to Skoggard and Waterson, is a “new frame [through which] to examine and articulate subjective and intersubjective states, which are key parts of human consciousness and behavior” (Skoggard and Waterson 2015, 1). While their article primarily regards the communal feeling of “we-ness” between various human actors, this research project seeks to identify the “we-ness” human actors feel towards the environment, mirroring Ingold’s idea of dwelling. By looking at a monism to replace dualisms such as nature versus city life and using affect theory, I hope to show that, in Skoggard and Waterson’s words, “feelings matter” (Skoggard and Waterson 2015). The re-imagining of urban urbanites and their cities as “belonging to nature” allows for the enactment of these feelings through the channel of activism. Although Shouse (2005) makes a distinction between affect and emotion, within this thesis and in other relevant literature (White 2017, for example), the two are sometimes used interchangeably. For me, affect
4This phrasing is not used in an attempt to separate the two, but rather to highlight the element of activist as a part of the environment;
like saying “mind and body” when really they are one at the same — the phrasing is to point out the activist as an actor both independent of and influenced by on its environment, and vice versa.
5“Rebels” is what XR activists call themselves; they are rebelling against hegemonic powers (through acts of civil disobedience) which
oppress people and exploit the planet.
and emotion are both ways of knowing which rely on “how bodies feel and how subjects make sense of how they feel” (White 2017 p. 477). The “bodies” and “subjects” I am looking at are members of Extinction Rebellion Amsterdam.
Setting and Research Population
Setting: Extinction Rebellion Background
Extinction Rebellion (XR) is an international environmental activist group characterised by its non-hierarchical form and nonviolent direct-action activities (Booth 2019). Founded in London in the spring of 2018, the group received support from the scientific community that October in the form of an open letter signed by 94 academics which urged governments to “work with scientists on the basis of the extant evidence [...and] to urgently develop a credible plan for rapid total decarbonisation of the economy” (Green et al. 2018). From the time that I first drafted a proposal for this thesis in November 2019 to the time of writing in spring/summer 2020, the number of countries with an XR branch jumped from 39 to 62, and the number of local groups increased from 600 to just over 1,000 (“Join the Rebellion - Extinction Rebellion Netherlands” 2019).
Extinction Rebellion’s mandate is to “respond to a present climate genocide [...] as we face a future of possible extinction” (Extinction Rebellion International 2019). XR does this by informing society of the climate crisis through protests and acts of civil disobedience.
They engage in these forms of activism in order to have the following three demands met:
1. “Tell the truth about the climate and ecological crisis that threatens our existence and communicate the urgency for change.
2. Act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025 in a just and fair manner.
3.Let citizens decide by establishing a Citizen’s Assembly which takes the lead on climate and ecological justice.” (Extinction Rebellion NL 2019).
XR believes these demands must be met by governments in order to avoid global environmental catastrophe and a 6th mass-extinction (Green et al. 2018). The group’s logo is a simplified hourglass in a circle which represents the idea that time is running out to prevent an ecological crisis, and the “X” that is portrayed at the center of the hourglass also represents the “X” in “e xtinction”. Social media has been integral to the rapid growth of the movement (Varghese 2019).
It is not clear when the Extinction Rebellion branch for the Netherlands became active, though it joined both Twitter (Extinction Rebellion Nederland Twitter 2020) and Facebook (Extinction Rebellion NL Facebook 2020) in November 2018. The national XR group for the Netherlands as a whole is inspired by and supports the actions of the original U.K. branch of the movement (Extinction Rebellion NL Facebook 2020). XR NL, as the Dutch national branch is commonly referred to, is also responsible for organizing itself on a large scale “through peaceful, creative, and disruptive actions” (Extinction Rebellion NL - Join the Rebellion 2019), for example in coordinating the protests in Amsterdam in October of 2019, which blocked important streets and bridges (Deutsch and Oziel 2019), and another collaborative protest in Schiphol attended by both Greenpeace and XR representatives in mid-December (Sterling and Jones 2019). XR NL also organizes other, smaller, get-to-know-eachother-type activities throughout the Netherlands by collaborating with local groups; their website shares individual events from these groups, which include XR Amsterdam, XR den Haag, XR Utrecht, and XR Rotterdam, among other cities.
Extinction Rebellion Amsterdam (XRA), the setting for this thesis, became activated its Twitter account in January of 2019 (Extinction Rebellion Amsterdam Twitter 2019), and while there is no recorded date for its start of activities on Facebook, its first mention in the press occurred in late March of 2019, when 60 protesters staged 12
a “die-in” near the Amsterdam Zuid train station (Climate activists drop “dead” near Station Zuid 2019). Die-ins, acts of protest wherein participants drop to the ground for approximately 30 minutes in order to appear dead to drive home the message that the climate crisis is an existential threat are just one of the forms of protest that Extinction Rebellion Amsterdam plans, although such events are common throughout other XR branches as well. XR Amsterdam also hosts regularly occurring discussion and information evenings as well as planting/gardening and DIY/repair workshops, political strategy meetings, and other events (Extinction Rebelion Events Page Facebook 2019).
Setting: Extinction Rebellion History
Extinction Rebellion, both in the Netherlands and internationally, draws inspiration from a long lineage of activism around the world and throughout history. The fight for women’s suffrage and the U.S. civil rights movement, along with peaceful figures as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, are cited as their inspiration for nonviolent advocacy in an effort to achieve socio-political change (Taylor and Gayle 2019). Nonviolence is not only pursued as a strategy from an ethical standpoint, but also because history has proven it to be a tried and true method of achieving radical political change (Robson 2019). XR credits Chenoweth and Stephan’s research into nonviolent civil disobedience as a cornerstone of their strategy; according to the two political scientists, over the past 100 years, nonviolent activism has had twice the rate of success as violent uprisings (Chenoweth and Stephan 2016). These successes are also more stable and long-lasting than those achieved by violence. Chenoweth and Stephan also found that a “magic number” of population mobilization must be achieved in order to ensure the success of a movement; this number is 3.5%. Three and a half percent of a given population needs to be involved in a movement to create tangible political and social change (Chenoweth and Stephan 2016, Robson 2019). This number is far easier to achieve with a nonviolent movement than a violent one; nonviolence means more accessibility for the general public, and the more people who are able to become involved in a movement, the more it will disrupt the status quo and create a push for change. In short, “ numbers really matter for building power in ways that can [...] pose a serious challenge or threat to entrenched authorities or occupations” (Chenoweth quotes in Robson 2019). When 3.5% of a given population is mobilized, it becomes virtually impossible for a movement to fail (Robson 2019).
Despite nonviolence and inclusivity as driving forces for XR, the movement as a whole has received some criticism for its naivete on the subject of intersectionality. XR strives to be a progressive collective, but in doing so it sometimes overlooks its own lack of diversity and its being out of touch with the working class (Lewis 2019). XR’s civil disobedience on public transportation platforms in London during the month of October, for example, has been cited as tone-deaf because it prevented people in historically poor, nonwhite neighborhoods from being able to get to work. This fits into the wider perception of mainstream and urban environmental activist groups echoing “the concerns, priorities, and ideas of middle-class white people in rich countries of the global north” (Garavito and Thanki 2019), thereby silencing outsider groups which may be even more affected by climate change. Indeed, XR is sometimes seen by outsiders as stereotypically middle-class to upper-middle class, left-wing, educated, and predominantly white (Lewis 2019). Arrests are commonly made at protests, and though most branches of XR categorize their members as “arrestable” versus “non-arrestable” volunteers, the tactic of being arrested en masse has been evaluated by communities of color as being insensitive to longstanding tensions between police and Afro-Carribean citizens in the U.K (Smoke 2019). I want to avoid making sweeping statements about Extinction Rebellion Amsterdam, especially because in my own very limited experience in the past six months, few of my interlocutors felt the same criticism was relevant to their own situation. That being said, I don’t want to discount accusations of hypocrisy on the inclusivity front; rather, it is important to acknowledge that my own experience operating primarily in the very small Legal Branch of Extinction Rebellion in the Netherlands shielded me and my primary informants from feeling excluded on the basis of race, sex, class, or any other distinguishing factor.
Research Population
The setting for my fieldwork is Extinction Rebellion the Netherlands, focusing especially on Amsterdam. As is a large metropolitan city with a dynamic, international community, I chose Amsterdam to serve as a template for other world capitals in order to more easily transpose my findings to Western cities such as London or New York in the future. As XR in the Netherlands is still growing, many organizational branches operate on behalf of the national branch; instead of XR branches in Utrecht, Nijmegen, the Hague, and Amsterdam each having their own 14
branches of Tech, Logistics, and Strategy, for example, these overarching coordination circles are organised under the umbrella of XR NL (refer to image below for all the circles).
In conducting fieldwork, I wanted to make sure to not only extract knowledge for the sake of this project, but to also give back in the form of my own experience. I therefore chose to base my ethnographic research in the Legal coordination circle because of my background in public international law. The Legal branch of XR NL has a meeting every two weeks in person, usually in Amsterdam, but with the onset of COVID-19 in mid-March we began to meet over Zoom. Members stay in touch via encrypted chatting over WhatsApp and two other encrypted platforms (Mattermost and Signal) several times a week. I became a part of the Legal circle in January 2020 and am still involved as I write. The legal circle itself is quite small, with approximately 10 people attending the largest meeting at which I was present and 5-6 familiar faces who consistently attend each meeting and stay in touch online. Most of my contextual ethnographic material is derived from these meetings, or, more accurately, casual discussion before and after the meetings, as the meetings themselves adhered strictly to an agenda of to-do’s and general updates. The more specific ethnographic material comes from one-on one semi-structured interviews and discussions. Approximately half of my interlocutors came from outside of the Legal Circle and consisted of people who I met through general activism, friends-of-friends participating in XR
Amsterdam, or in one case, a classmate who was heavily involved in Extinction Rebellion before she left to conduct her own fieldwork . 6
With further regards to the research population, this project is concerned with the activist every(wo)man. My target demographic was people who were active Extinction Rebellion’s activities in any form, whether it be from behind the scenes (“non-arrestable”mobilization agents, internal legal team, other strategists) or on the front lines (“arrestable”, on-the-streets, risk-takers, demonstrators) . There is no clear demarcation of membership, but7 activists are usually considered affiliated if they attend events such as marches, die-ins, or discussion evenings. In theory, anyone who carries out acts in the name of Extinction Rebellion and adheres to principles of nonviolence can be considered an XR rebel. I have allowed a degree of malleability in who I consider to be an “urban environmental activist”, in order to include as diverse a pool of participants as possible; my research population thus includes a cross-section of veterans of the movement, people who joined even after I did, people who have been arrested several times, and people who conduct their activism from behind the scenes. My main criteria in selecting interlocutors was that they are affiliated in some way with Extinction Rebellion Amsterdam.
Method
The use of social media is part of the DNA of the Extinction Rebellion Movement (Varghese 2019). The international branch, NL branch, and Amsterdam branch all use it to keep supporters and the press up-to-date on both small-scale meetups and large-scale direct action events. For this reason, keeping up-to-date with XR Amsterdam’s social media channels was the starting point of my fieldwork. In the time before I established on-the-ground contacts, I stayed informed about XR Amsterdam’s activities primarily through their Facebook Page. There, they post events that are catered to specific groups, as well as more general seminars such as the recurring “The Climate Crisis and what to do about it” ( Talk: the Climate Crisis and what to do about it (ENG)), Nonviolent Direct Action Training (NVDA) and “XRepair Extinction Rebellion Repair Workshop” (XRepair
6 I was grateful to find that my general interest in the topic of nature and our relationship to it was one that resonated with many of the
people I met. They were happy to talk about their own experiences and histories of belonging to both urban and non-urban ecosystems and were excited to share the evolution of their ways of thinking with me.
7 I had about a 50/50 representation of arrestables and non-arrestables among my interlocutors, with 3 of them having been arrested in
the past year.
Extinction Rebellion Repair workshop). The first two weeks of fieldwork were spent observing, sensing, registering, and seeking out ideal candidates for further, in-depth research in the form of interviews. I attended events meant to inform and recruit activists and gathered background knowledge on Extinction Rebellion’s history, strategy, and structure. From there, I decided that the Legal coordination circle was the best fit for me.
I had intended to use digital ethnography as a supporting part of my fieldwork to better monitor the rhetoric used within XR by following their Instagram page (see below) and paying close attention to all posts across Facebook and Twitter as well. Digital ethnography was going to accompany offline forms of research because of the critical function of social media has had in organizing XR events since its beginning. I had anticipated to closely analyze the language Extinction Rebellion uses in press releases and official statements, as well as for the promotion of events and photo captions. One image from the instagram posts below, for example, shows a poster with the words “our mother is dying”, perhaps implying a familial, loving relationship which references Mother Earth (Milton 2002, 5) — this kind of content is eye-catching and part of the legacy XR has created for itself as a highly visible entity in the media.
Ultimately, as my fieldwork began to focus more on in-person meetings and interviews, I decided that it was too much to be actively involved in XR and to be constantly on the lookout for insights over social media. I was
already present digitally through 3 messaging platforms and because the work itself could sometimes be draining, I found that constant reminders in the form of notifications and visibility at all hours through social media was distracting me from interacting with the people I had already connected with as interlocutors. For that reason, as interesting as poster signs and social media posts are to look at, they are used minimally and as context for other ethnographic content within this thesis.
Operationalization
The key concepts of my research question include sense and feeling, the perception of nature, and the structure 8 and strategy of XR. In order to answer my main research question, I have operationalized my sub questions according to what each of them touches upon; feeling, thinking,and doing. These three verbs correspond to the three body chapters of this thesis; with this structure I organise my investigation into what my research population feels, how they exist in that feeling, and how that feeling motivates them to act. Alongside these three verbs, I have also started to envision this thesis as a tree. Each chapter serves a purpose and comes together to answer the many questions that grew from my motivation into my research question.
It may seem counterintuitive to ask my interlocutors to define nature environment and to describe their personal relationship to — from this standpoint, it is as if I am assuming and confirming the anthropocentric dualism of nature and culture by mentioning “nature” and “culture” as two seperate entities which must be united by an “and”. Nonetheless, I seek to adhere to a monist approach
8How does the feeling of being connected to nature inform the practices and goals of Extinction Rebellion Amsterdam?
to human ecology to emphasise “embeddedness, self regulation and local autonomy” (Descola and Palsson 1996) over “objectification and [...] decontextualization” (Descola and Palsson 1996) between humans and nature. Consequently, the first subquestion, “How do urban environmental activists describe nature?”, asks for a description. It deals with the feelings people have in relation to nature in a metropolitan environment. Briefly, examples my interlocutors came up with included large, present examples such as parks, the ocean, and swimming ponds, and micro examples such as weeds growing by the side of the road or intentionally-left wild grass growing along walking paths. What about viruses, pests, and bacteria? Many also expressed a sense of being unable to describe what nature was; however, even if people could not use words to describe what nature is, each one of them had a plethora of anecdotes which described how it made them feel. How they felt a sense of responsibility or respect towards it, or for one, how it was not important to her until it became a symbol for humanity’s attitude toward itself. In conducting my fieldwork, it became clear that people’s relationship to nature included and embodied their relationship to their human communities as well.
The second subquestion, “How do these people experience nature in their metropolitan existence?”, ended up not being as important as I thought it would be, and that, I think, is important. The question originated as a way to acknowledge and confront the tired assumption that people living in large cities may not know what nature is in the same way that non-city dwellers do. In Chapter 2, I briefly explore where diverse perspectives of nature originate from in an effort to move away from the individuality of feeling that was explored in the first chapter. I found that much of the value that was placed on nature in my interlocutors’ own personal histories came from its role as both a space for community and as a freely accessible commons. Preserving the environment in an effort to promote what I have called “the two c’s”, community and commons, turned out to be far more important to my research population than ruminating on perspectives and worldviews. Focusing on perspectives, to some, was a way of de-centering more pressing issues; all that mattered, and indeed what united the rebels I talked to was that their way of thinking about nature focused on subverting the hegemonic ideas of nature as a resource. Focusing on community bonds and freely accessible (non-monetized) space was an important factor in their sense of connectedness to nature.
The final subquestion, “How do people perform environmental activism?”, looks at 3 key principles championed by Extinction Rebellion — nonviolence, non-hierarchy, and care — and how these values reflect the group’s 19
connection to environmental and social responsibility as one single entity. Community bonds, strengthened by a regenerative culture which attempts to keep rebels resilient and sustainable as human resources, is seen as essential in achieving environmental, social, and political equity. XR acknowledges that that wider society could benefit from similar forms of radical and even politicised care — for oneself, for others, and for nature, all of which constitute different parts of the same thing. Principles of nonviolence, used both as a moral device and as a strategy, mimic XR’s wish to demonstrate its opposition to systemic violence which creates the problems against which it fights. It also uses nonviolence as a strategic tool to be more accessible to potential activists. Finally, the internal non-hierarchical structure of Extinction Rebellion mimics the group’s demand that governments create a Citizens’ Assembly of diverse people who make collective decisions on environmental policy regardless of level of experience or education. These values and practices Extinction Rebellion adheres to create a working template for the changes the group wishes to see implemented across wider society in order to create a more socio-environmentally just world.
Ethical Considerations
Because this thesis is part of a course at a Dutch university and because the fieldwork also takes place in the Netherlands, I adhered to the 2019 Dutch Anthropological Association’s Ethical Guidelines (Koster et al. 2019). I do not foresee ways in which the research findings enclosed may cause harm to Extinction Rebellion Amsterdam members; nonetheless, I took steps to ensure that privacy was protected, participants felt safe and comfortable, and that my motives were clear.
Firstly, I was honest regarding my position(ality) as an anthropology student as well as an activist-researcher 9
from the beginning of my fieldwork. Upon my introduction to members of XR Amsterdam and the Legal Circle, I shared my background as a student. From there, the interviews I conducted were on a voluntary basis and interviewees were welcome to skip questions if they felt uncomfortable (none chose to skip). Those who retroactively wanted their interviews removed from my research could contact me to do so, up until the date of submission (none did).
9 This thesis does not come from an impartial standpoint; I believe that the climate crisis is the most pressing issue my generation faces.
During the note-taking and transcription for the interviews I conducted with activists, only first names were used in order to protect privacy. In the thesis itself, I only use the first (or second) letter of each interlocutor’s name. The protection of digital privacy is also important. In a previous section, for example, I included three screenshots from XR Amsterdam’s Instagram page; in the third image, I blocked out a man’s face. I find the anonymity of my participants of special importance because of police involvement in actions against XR members (Interview D, Deutsch and Oziel 2019). As a last note on privacy, all my note-taking/recording devices (except notes on paper before transcription) are password protected and kept either with me or in a safe location at all times.
Finally, regarding positionality, I will not pretend that this thesis will be impartial to the subject matter at hand — environmental activism. For many years, I have been convinced that a shift towards a deep-ecology-like relationship between humans and the environment would be best for all. Indeed, much of the literature referenced in my theoretical framework also encapsulates this slant. I furthermore believe that socio-political activism is important, and that the climate crisis is a legitimate cause. Though I went into fieldwork with open eyes reported as objectively as possible in order to preserve academic integrity, complete impartiality is, of course, impossible.
1. Roots:
Feeling
This chapter’s purpose is to enrich the reading of subsequent chapters by laying out a blueprint of the sense of being connected to nature among XR activists. This feeling of belonging to nature serves an anchor for the worldview from which my study population operates, which in turn guides their strategy and the forms of activism in which they engage. These aspects of my research will be discussed in chapters 2 and 3, respectively. For now, the feeling of belonging to nature — and unexpectedly, to other people within the XR community — forms the first pillar of my argument and the answer to my first subquestion. The dual sense of belonging to nature and to a community is essential in the manifestation of Extinction Rebellion’s unique form of socio-environmental activism.
The reliance on feeling, both as a form of knowing (i.e. “I feel like I should do more for climate justice”) and relating to each other in meetings (“I feel happy to be here with you all”), engulfed me in a slight culture shock when I joined my first Legal meeting. That day, everyone was asked to check in with themselves and share their feelings before the meeting commenced. Gatherings were always opened and closed in this way; each participant was asked to reflect on how they felt both within themselves and in relation to the group, the issue at hand, or their day at work. That first day, I remember checking-in with something along the lines of “I feel happy to be here, a bit nervous but curious at the same time. I like the fact that everyone has a chance to speak and hope I can contribute to this meeting”. Going into the field, radical emotional honesty and openness with strangers were foreign to me, but also a good introduction to the way things are done within Extinction Rebellion; the practice of checking-in with oneself and with others highlighted that being in touch with one’s affect is at the root of many of XR’s actions. Indeed, it is the starting point from which people think and act; feeling “provides the primary blueprints for cognition, decision, and action” (Tomkins 2014, 167), something which will be reflected in the subsequent two chapters.
But first, this chapter starts with the exploration of feeling as an important facet of XR’s culture; during the course of my fieldwork, there was an implicit sense of reverence for nature among my interlocutors. In this chapter, I want to emphasise that although I came across different personal perspectives, there was a general consensus which can be summarised as: nature is important it makes people feel good — even if not all elements are positive (hurricanes, earthquakes, and of course, the coronavirus), balance in natural systems is important and needs to be preserved and fought for.
“I feel more alive in nature...”
“... the worst thing is feeling disconnected from it” (Interview D). This is a sentiment that was reflected repeatedly among the people I talked to, both in interviews and in casual conversation. There was a sense of urgency at feeling disconnected, at the possibility of loss: “my generation might be one of the last to see nature how it is” (Interview E). At the same time, there was serenity: “going outside, smelling fresh air — it’s satiating 22
a part of yourself” (Interview S). Though not everyone I talked to was motivated to participate in Extinction Rebellion by strictly environmental motives — a strong relationship between environmentalism and social activism and politics was a red line through people's beliefs — connecting to nature was overwhelmingly important in peoples’ lives. From there, it served as a catalyst for participation in Extinction Rebellion’s movement.
Despite the general and simplistic consensus that “nature = good,” peoples’ conceptualizations of and practices in nature varied greatly. One interlocutor, who I am calling E, is a student and football player of carribean descent and has spent every summer since childhood by the sea. She told me, when I asked how nature played a role in her life, “I know I need a certain amount of time at the beach. I would not be able to live in a city without it. It’s where I’m the happiest” (Interview E). She couldn’t pinpoint her first memory of being in nature because it was so normal for her; it was “like being in the kitchen” (Interview E). For her, the discrepancy between city life (London and Amsterdam) and being intentionally immersed in nature made her more appreciative, and in her words, drove her to “try to be more respectful [of it]”. She began to make choices that reflected these beliefs in her teens; she engaged with lifestyle practices such as thrifting clothes instead of buying first-hand, and eventually transitioned to veganism. Despite her conviction that humans are a part of nature, and that “in the bigger picture, we are indistinguishable” (interview E), she acknowledged that her lifestyle changes did not come from purely an enviro-ethical standpoint. Rather, she was drawn to veganism first because she had been exposed to it by friends. From there, she educated herself and found that being together to cook made things convenient and more enjoyable. In her words, she transitioned to veganism “for health and performance reasons first, and then for ethical and environmental reasons” (Interview E). Likewise, in her refusal to buy new clothes from the age of 14, she cites her motivations as social cohesion first, and then saving money and “looking stylish” (Interview E). Once she had already established these practices, and as she became exposed to more information on the climate crisis, she felt like she “should do more” (interview E).
Practices that had started for convenience reasons found themselves planted in the fertile cross-section between a strong affinity for nature and an interest in social responsibility. Her already strong connection to the environment strengthened as she became more aware of how her individual choices impacted the climate crisis, and her research into consumer habits, large corporations, and political power inflamed her conviction that 23
advocating for the environment and vulnerable groups was, in fact, one and the same (Interview E). At 19, she now tentatively considers herself an activist and mostly concerns herself with educating herself and others on 10 ecofeminism, the human and environmental exploitation caused by capitalism (“Miss C needs to go”), and how 11 to dismantle “our current destructive system” (Interview E). With regards to her motivation for engaging with activism alongside XR and in her personal life, she told me “we think of ourselves as outsiders [of nature], but we have more of a role to play if you view humans as being as part of something bigger” (Interview E).
From E’s medley of motivations, what became most evident to me was that there was no single reason for her choice to engage with activism: she mentioned social norms among her peers, convenience, and connection to the environment. From there, she was more comfortable making sacrifices which aligned with already-established beliefs as her knowledge on environmentalism expanded. While she acknowledges that her reasons were perhaps superficial, the reason she conceded to be categorised as an activist was because her priorities were informing and persuading others about the environmental and social benefits of consuming less and consuming more consciously (without being invasive, she emphasised). What took me somewhat by surprise in talking with E and almost all of my other interlocutors was the heavily social aspect of their entrance into activism, which I had not accounted for in creating my research question initially.
Throughout the course of my fieldwork, being “connected to nature” became synonymous with “connecting to each other”. I had anticipated for most people to feel that their personal connection to nature, their affinity for something that they couldn’t quite define, might be the champion of all motivators to engage with Extinction Rebellion. Instead, it became evident to me that social cohesion on a micro- scale (in the form of friends learning and spending time with one another) and on the macro- scale (as embodied in the socio-political aspects of climate change and environmental activism) to be just as important as feeling connected to nature. Indeed, to answer part of my research question, “how does the feeling of belonging to nature inform the practices and goals of Extinction Rebellion”, we have to address the first subquestion on how XR activists describe their connection
10almost nobody I spoke to answered my question “Do you consider yourself an activist” with a resounding “Yes”. These are people
who have been arrested or have made large lifestyle changes to accommodate for more of their time and energy to go toward Extinction Rebellion. After some probing, many of my interviewees reconsidered but came back with humble statements such as “kind of” (Interview G) or “a little bit” (Interview E).
11She referred to capitalism at times as “Miss C”, which I thought was an interesting way to lighten the conversation. She also called
COVID-19 “Miss Rona”, which is apparently common among Gen Z.
to nature. Nature, to many activists I spoke with, includes oneself and humanity; therefore, connecting to nature means connecting to each other, to a social network of other activists, friends and family, other members of society, and the global population as a whole. This is why, to Extinction Rebellion, social justice and ecological justice go hand in hand.
For one more brief case study, I want to look at what S told me about not feeling connected to nature in the traditional, dualistic sense, until very recently. S is a woman in her mid-20s, and like E, grew up in major cities (London and Hong Kong) before ending up in Amsterdam for her studies. In her words, she is “a city person, not connected to nature” (Interview S). S revealed that it had taken her “so long to engage with environmentalism because [she] didn’t feel connected to [nature]”; she had furthermore “never cared about animals or being in nature” (Interview S) until the past year. From young adulthood, S had always been politically engaged and opinionated, but hadn’t thought about engaging with environmentalism until her best friend in the UK joined XR, which was the first time she heard about the group. When she moved to Amsterdam for university shortly thereafter, in the fall of 2019, S’s new friends were also involved with Extinction Rebellion, although she was not, at that point. She tagged along to meetings with the primary motivation of encountering new like-minded people in her new city. Up until that point, she did not consider herself to be someone who seeks out nature 12
because she “is not someone who helps [herself] easily” (Interview S). Her engagement with nature in the form of camping, hiking, going on retreats or walks in the city were strictly a part of social activities such as youth movements, music festivals, friend-reunions, or community activities. Eventually, a personal connection to nature did emerge because she “[cares] about people”, and though she conceded that her relationship is not as spiritual or personal as that of some of her peers, she does feel respect toward the environment because its survival is essential to many of the social and political issues she cares about (such as anti-colonialism and creating free commons which serve as positive spaces for communities).
In S’s case, the realization and reconciliation of environmental and social issues as compatible is tangible. Originally, she had cared only about the latter (social issues) and not much about the former (environmentalism), but in seeking out community in her new city, she found like-minded individuals who engaged in not only social and political but also environmental activism through XR; this is how she was able to grasp that social causes go
12 To this day, the moment in which she was most aware of our “interconnectedness with nature” was when she “dropped acid”
(Interview S), or took LSD, a psychedelic drug.
hand in hand with environmental activism (Interview S). Furthermore, it was interesting to see that S equated seeking out nature with helping herself; she seemed to be aware of the good that nature did to her own mental and physical health, but did not draw the connection to nature and other’s well being until her engagement with friends and XR community members. In this way, Extinction Rebellion also contains an element of persuasiveness which is evident in the culture of environmentalism.
Cultural Underpinnings of Environmentalism as Reflected by Extinction
Rebellion Amsterdam
This thesis takes the view on environmentalism presented in Kay Milton’s book Environmentalism and Cultural Theory: Exploring the Role of Anthropology in Environmental Discourse (2002). Environmental activism is a cultural phenomenon, one which encourages social change through influencing the ways in which wider society “understand[s], value[s], and use[s its environment]” (Milton 2002, 24). The culture of environmental movements, with regards to XR Amsterdam and others, is ingrained in the way these groups practice their worldview and positioning therein through “feelings, thoughts, interpretations, knowledge, ideology, values, and so on” (Milton 2002, 33). This idea contains notes of Bourdieu’s habitus (1977) which “ensures the active presence of past experience within individuals” — growing up by the seaside, learning about recycling in school, camping with friends, for example — “in the forms of schemes of perception, thought, and action” (Lehman 2007, 92; Bourdieu 1977, 72). It is therefore feelings which evolve from experiences that reign over activists’ thoughts, perceptions, and eventually, actions. In the case of Extinction Rebellion, members’ understandings of the world lean towards a strong sense of community as well as a feeling of being close to nature — their goal is to have wider society, through policy and practice, eventually reflect these strong bonds of fellowship and environmental compassion.
In taking direction from Saba Mahmood’s study of self-cultivation in the context of the Egyptian Islamic Revival (2001), I want to point out that XR is operating from a position of subordination in the wider socio-political context in which they exist — this is why XR activists call themselves “rebels”. It is an attempt to emphasise
their resistance toward the hegemonic powers which create the environmental and social problems they struggle against. The conditions under which XR operates exemplify the paradox of subjectivation in that the “processes and conditions that secure a subject’s subordination are also the means by which [it] becomes a self-conscious identity and agent” (Mahmood 2001). Extinction Rebellion exists not only to overthrow the existing power structures which, in their eyes, prioritize profit over people and planet, but also to foster a new culture through self-cultivation which manifests itself in acts and practices, as will be explored further in Chapter 3. But for now, environmental activist groups, and certainly XR, can be viewed as persuasive entities that endeavor to have community beliefs absorbed into their broader spheres of living; as advocates for change, their impact is measured by how society adapts “[...] the ways they understand, value and use their environments” (Milton 2002, 24) to match. Within this persuasive exercise is an element of behaving as XR would have others behave, or a component of “practice what you preach”.
Hence, the internal and external activities of Extinction Rebellion have mimicked a desire for a more eco-conscious, self-dependent yet communal lifestyle, for example in providing accessible workshops for making, growing, sharing, and fixing resources (Meeting 1). This element of lifestyle cultivation by way encouraging community and self-sufficiency demonstrates how individual practices are a reflection of changes rebels wish to see on a larger scale, from local to regional and international governing bodies. For example, one of the great challenges XR faces is the fact that decision-makers at the most powerful levels around the world remain overwhelmingly established in their capitalist ways, and their policies reflect that. One Caribbean-Dutch interlocutor of mine, when prompted about how the climate crisis became so dire, remarked that
“The reality of it is , everything can be traced back to [...] how the decisions are made by elites: people with money and the global north … Ordinary people who are affected the most [by climate change] don’t have a say in any of the decisions [that create and influence the problem]. That’s how the system is set up. It’s functioning the way it should — I don’t know if people realize that ”. (Interview E)
To remedy this problem of elitism and top-down governance, XR asks governments to create a Citizen’s Assembly composed of diverse perspectives to make decisions regarding the climate crisis as an inherently non-hierarchical political entity. Activist-academic Anna Pigott, with regards to her participation XR-UK’s early protesting in Spring 2019, remarked that “[the] eschewing of personal aggrandizement fits with a wider theme in
XR, from a lack of named people on its website to its insistence on the need for a Citizens Assembly to lead decisions in government” (Pigott 2019). This expression of non-hierarchy shifts the conversation away from the Western social norms of personal achievement, heroism, and individual recognition which are reflected in the media and instead opts for the role of collectivism in fostering change (Pigott 2019). Ethnographic details on how Extinction Rebellion’s internal structures foreshadow their larger-scale demands will be presented in chapter three. But for now, I want to emphasise that through their actions and communications, members of Extinction Rebellion Amsterdam advocate for a collective distancing from the mindset in which the environment is considered a resource, and towards one that recognizes the precarity of natural systems and their inherent value — in fewer words, a shift from the biosphere to ecosystem thinking, from anthropocentrism to accessible ecocentrism in the form of their micro-cultural practices of non-hierarchy and harboring an affective view which situates humanity within the scope of nature. Noble as this is, they are not the first to attempt in shifting the reconceptualizing the relationship between people and planet through thinking, doing, and defining.
In terms of how people of various backgrounds use their environments, Milton makes a distinction between ecosphere people and biosphere people. The former encapsulates those who “live within a single ecosystem”(Milton 2002, 29) and use resources nearby (fostering perhaps both physical and emotional closeness), while the latter describes what could be referred to as industrial urbanites. Their lifestyles are heavily tied to a global system of trade and rely on resource use from around the world. Because of this, if supplies from a certain origin are depleted, biosphere people have the option to seek resources elsewhere without having to worry about sustainable use. Milton argues that a primary discussion within environmentalist thought is that “the consequences of this attitude now coming home to roost and the [world’s ecosystems are…] endangered as a result of biosphere peoples’ thoughtless exploitation of its resources” (Milton 2002, 30). Simply put, while ecosphere people tend to feel a sense of closeness to and responsibility towards their environment, biosphere people lack this environmental empathy and are thus more prone to ignoring the effects of environmental depletion. Without being too simplistic, this dichotomy houses reverberations of colonialist and industrialist expansion, in which those who existed in an ecosphere-adjacent lifestyle were converted into biosphere-folk “often unwillingly, often forcibly, but [...eventually] with their enthusiastic cooperation” (Milton 2002, 30). In one system, man is dominant, while the other asks for a rebalancing of the scales such that man and its environment form a closed and sustainable system together. The goal of environmental movements has mostly 28
