A contribution to building unified movements for the environment: aligning interests, forming alliances

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to outline a way in which research can contribute to the advance of environmental social movements. Current struggles under capitalism are fragmented and localized, which means that creating unity out of fragmented struggles is essential for movements to become more successful. The Right to the City (RTC) as a concept, in its most radical formulation, has this ambition at its core. I examine various attempts from the RTC literature to promote unity, paying particular attention to the use of ideas of justice. In general these attempts are too abstract to be of practical use to existing movements. They do provide useful insight to researchers, by showing the necessity of paying attention to the context that particular movements operate in, but means of formulating advice for movement activists remain vague. I argue that to be more useful to movements, research should and can have something to say about the practical issues movements face, such as, how demands are framed and how to engage with other organizations. I argue that this can be done by bringing together analysis at a number of levels. In the case of movements of labor for the environment, Marxist geographic structural analysis can be combined with political and cultural analysis based on Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and analysis of the dynamics of movement emergence and advance using social movement theory. I argue that such a framework can connect a vision for radical change with the more immediate problems of organizing social movements.

Sustainability as a Real Utopia – Heuristics for transformative sustainability research

“…11 Nevertheless, demonstrating viability can of course be challenging and may demand further research and experimentation, requiring mobilization of resources. Fortunately, there are many existing approaches within sustainability science that provide relevant methodological insights for exploring alternatives in complex realities, such as living labs (Evans and Karvonen, 2014), scenario approaches (Swart et al., 2004) and immanent criticism (Boda and Faran, 2018; Boda and Jerneck, 2019; O’Byrne, 2020b). Case-based approaches are of clear importance as these enable assessment of desirability and viability within concrete contexts.…”

“… 5 Additional procedural guidance can be found within the critical realist literature on interdisciplinarity (e.g. Bhaskar et al., 2018; Nastar et al., 2018) as well as in a number of PhD theses in sustainability science that applied immanent criticism (Boda, 2018; Harnesk, 2018; Isgren, 2018; O’Byrne, 2020b). …”

Three crucial considerations when presenting alternative paradigms in sustainability research

“…To be clear, our point is not about science becoming "too political"; in our view contributing scientific analyses to social movements is no less political than contributing to governments or private industry, and we side with others that actively encourage the former in the face of glaringly inadequate action taken by formal government and private industry to address current social and ecological crises (Isgren et al 2019;Boda and Jerneck 2019;O´Byrne, 2020;Harnesk and Isgren 2021). The point, rather, is maintaining a particular contribution for scientific knowledge specifically.…”

An Approach to Justifying Normative Arguments in Sustainability Science, with Insights from the Philosophy of Science and Social Theory

“…It promotes the use of theories, which themselves outline conditions under which people's values should be involved in deciding on courses of action for sustainability. Finally I want to note that the aim of the approach is not to lecture the general public about what they should do, but to engage with agents of change that are already directed toward the course of action that research identifies as desirable [35,54]. From there it is up to researchers to engage with agents in society to negotiate how their research can be practically useful in pursuing these courses of action.…”