The Making of Green Knowledge: Environmental Politics and Cultural Transformation Andrew Jamison Frontmatter More Information

Cambridge University Press 0521792525 - The Making of Green Knowledge: Environmental Politics and Cultural Transformation Andrew Jamison Frontmatter More information

The Making of Green Knowledge

The Making of Green Knowledge provides a wide-ranging introduction to the politics of the environment and the development of environmental knowledge. Focusing in particular on the quest in recent years for more sustainable forms of socio-economic development, it attempts to place environmental politics within a broad historical perspective and examines the different political strategies and cultural practices that have emerged. The Making of Green Knowledge is a uniquely personal explo- ration of the relationship between sustainable development, public par- ticipation and cultural transformation. Through a highly accessible mix of theory, practical analysis and personal reﬂection it seeks to bring the making of green knowledge to life.

ANDREW JAMISON is an American who has lived in Sweden since 1970 and is now Professor of Technology and Society at the University of Aalborg. He is co-author with Ron Eyerman of Social Movements: a Cognitive Approach (1991), Seeds of the Sixties (1994) and Music and Social Movements (1998).

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 0521792525 - The Making of Green Knowledge: Environmental Politics and Cultural Transformation Andrew Jamison Frontmatter More information

The Making of Green Knowledge Environmental politics and cultural transformation

Andrew Jamison

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, VIC 3166, Australia Ruiz de Alarc´on13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org

C Andrew Jamison 2001

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2001

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

Typeface Plantin 10/12 pt. System LATEX2ε [TB]

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Jamison, Andrew. The making of green knowledge : environmental politics and cultural transformation / by Andrew Jamison. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 521 79252 5 – ISBN 0 521 79687 3 (pc) 1. Environmentalism. 2. Environmantal policy. 3. Sustainable development. I. Title. GE195 .J36 2001 363.705 – dc21 2001035300

ISBN 0 521 79252 5 hardback ISBN 0 521 79687 3 paperback

For Margareta She showed me where the berries grow, A green and lovely thing to know.

Contents

List of tables page viii Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1 1 On the ambiguities of greening 16 2 Social movements and knowledge-making 45 3 The dialectics of environmentalism 71 4 National shades of green 98 5 The challenge of green business 123 6 On the dilemmas of activism 147 7 Concluding reﬂections 176

References 182 Index 203

vii

Tables

1 Environmental traditions page 80 2 Phases of environmentalism 82 3 Cognitive regimes of sustainable development 179

viii

Acknowledgments

This book has been such a long time in the making that there are many contributions to acknowledge. Let me start by thanking Aant Elzinga, who has served as mentor, friend and colleague for all these years, and who read through the almost final manuscript, giving me lots to mull over. Others who have read and commented on portions of the manuscript are YrjöHaila, Maria Kousis, Trine Pipi Kræmer, Jesper Lassen, Rolf Lidskog, Jeppe Læssøe, David Sonnenfeld, Joe Strahl, and Bron Szerszynski, and an anonymous referee for Cambridge University Press. Thank you all; I think it has become a much better book for your efforts. Sarah Caro at Cambridge has played a crucial nurturing role which has been highly professional and highly appreciated, as has the copyediting of Christine Lyall Grant. In developing the ideas that I present, a number of contributions have been absolutely essential. Jacqueline Cramer and Jeppe Læssøe worked with Ron Eyerman and me in the 1980s when we compared the environmental movements in Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Much of the theoretical and conceptual framework that I use in the book was developed at that time, and later, together with Ron Eyerman, in our sub- sequent books on social movements. Other contributions have come from Gan Lin, Bach Tan Sinh and Joe Strahl, and, in particular, Erik Baark, as we have explored the cultural dimensions of science and technology policy in a number of different guises through the years. Let me especially thank Ron and Erik for providing a very special kind of intellectual collaboration that is reflected on so many of the pages that follow. In 1996, I had the dubious honor of being given responsibility for coordinating a project in the European Union’s program on targeted socio-economic research, which provided the immediate incentive to write this book. My partners – Mario Diani, Leonardas Rinkevicius, Johan Schot, Brian Wynne, and Per Østby – are all to be thanked, as are all of our research assistants, for making the project a true learning experience in more ways than one. More recently, my students and col- leagues at Aalborg University and in the Danish Center for Environmental

xAcknowledgments

Social Science have been subjected to countless versions of these chap- ters at courses and seminars, as well as at more informal gatherings. Arne Remmen and Eskild Holm Nielsen, my collaborators in the project The Industrial Appropriation of Pollution Prevention, have been especially important in helping me to understand the Danish varieties of green knowledge-making, as well as the Aalborg style of education. The book has been written while I have participated in another European project, The Transformation of Environmental Activism, and I would like to thank my partners, and especially the project coordinator Chris Rootes, for helping me to bring my understanding up to date. A number of people have invited me to make presentations at confer- ences and seminars, and have offered comments and suggestions that I have tried my best to take into account in the process of writing. Let me thank, in particular, Ida Andersen, Marianne Bender, Maurie Cohen, Hans Glimell, Mogens Godballe, Robin Grove-White, Yrjö Haila, Maarten Hajer, Mikael H˚ard,Per Hillbur, Richard Norgaard, Richard Rogers, Harald Rohracher, Knut Sørensen, Per Sørup, and Jane Summerton for giving me the opportunity to air my evolving ideas in public. Research costs money, and so it is the Danish, Nordic and European tax-payers and their representatives, who, in the final analysis, have made it possible for me to write this book. In particular, I acknowledge the support of the European Union and the Nordic Environmental Research Program for the project on Public Engagement and Science and Tech- nology Policy Options, and the support of the Danish Strategic Envi- ronmental Research Program for the project on Industrial Appropriation of Pollution Prevention. I hope that at least some of you who have paid for the projects feel that the money was well spent. On the home front, finally, Margareta and Klara have probably suffered the most as I have let this book take over far too much of my attention, and keep me from doing my share in the garden (among other places) during the last couple of years. Thank you all! As part of my belief in recycling, portions of this book have appeared in preliminary versions in the following copyrighted publications, which I hereby acknowledge: Seeds of the Sixties (co-author Ron Eyerman), University of California Press, 1994; The Shaping of the Global Environmental Agenda: The Role of Non-governmental Organizations, in Scott Lash, Bronislaw Szerszynski and Brian Wynne, eds., Risk Environment Modernity: Towards a New Ecology, Sage Publications, 1996; American Anxieties: Technol- ogy and the Reshaping of American Values, in Mikael H˚ardand Andrew Jamison, eds., The Intellectual Appropriation of Technology. Discourses on

Acknowledgments xi

Modernity, 1900–1939, The MIT Press, 1998; National Shades of Green: Comparing the Swedish and Danish Styles in Ecological Modernisation (co-author Erik Baark) in Environmental Values, no. 2, 1999: 119–218; On the Ambiguities of Greening, in Innovation. The European Journal of Social Sciences, no. 3, 2000: 249–264; Science, Technology and the Quest for Sustainable Development, in Technology Analysis and Strategic Manage- ment, no. 1, 2001: 9–22; and Environmentalism in an Entrepreneurial Age: Reﬂections on the Greening of Industry Network, in Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, no. 1, 2001: 1–13.