Hurley, Ch. 3: Middle Class Environmentalism

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Hurley, Ch. 3 Middle Class Environmentalism

• ISS 310
• Spring 2002
• Prof. Alan Rudy
• 3-26-02

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Ch.3 Middle Class Envtalism

• Environmental activism emerged out of the effort
  to protect those physical features of residential
  life fresh air, pastoral landscapes, open space
  that had become central components of
  middle-class identity. The emergence of a
  middle-class environmental protection ethic
  flowed from the growth of a consumer-oriented
  white-collar contingent. (47-8)

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Ch.3 Middle Class Envtalism II

• Because white collar employees, in contrast to
  independent proprietors, did not fully control
  their work situations, they channeled surplus
  income toward purchases and activities that
  improved the quality of life away from work, in
  new suburban communities. (50)
• NOTE What is Hurleys point here? Who is the
  implicit comparison with? Who is not in the
  picture? Do you agree? What information do you
  have to support it or reject it?

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Ch.3 Middle Class Envtalism IV

• Suburbs ? Envtal Safety ? residents demanded
  more aggressive action from local authorities.
• Many early environmentalists were women who, as
  recognized (accepted and expected) guardians of
  domestic welfare, accepted primary responsibility
  for the maintenance of suburban communities.
• For many, environmental reform provided a viable
  alternative to domestic confinement. (56)
• Remember the role of The League of Women Voters!

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Ch.3 Middle Class Envtalism V

• middle-class women advanced their cause through
  civic groups and community organizations.
• Note the centrality of women in the production of
  middle class political issues, as well as in the
  reproduction of home life!!! (57-60)

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Ch.3 Middle Class Envtalism VI

• Political accommodation and democratic optimism
  generated a pretty useless smoke abatement law,
  esp. given industrial expansion during the
  subsequent period (61-64) (gtdevelopment trumps
  ltpollution)
• Protection of the Miller shoreline, among other
  lake-proximate areas, generated a more defiant
  and parochial environmental politics within the
  middle-class protect environmental amenities
  keep out encroaching African-Americans! (64-65)

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Ch.3 Middle Class Envtalism VII

• Community Action to Reverse Pollution (CARP) and
  NEPAs Environmental Impact Statements ?
  democraticization in order to DEFEND/MAINTAIN the
  Dunes unique ecological formations for
  recreation, aesthetic appreciation, and
  scientific study.
• NOT USE but preservation and study

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Ch.3 Middle Class Envtalism VIII

• Theres more on environmentalism, and
  wilderness/nature preservation, as a means of
  maintaining residential homogeneity along class
  and race lines and recreational exclusivity.
  (71-73)
• NOTE What do you make of Hurleys argument that
  middle class environmentalism assumes and accepts
  that changing production is off limits to
  environmental politics? that all that can be
  done is the defense of environmental amenities in
  the name of domestic consumption and social
  status?

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Ch.3 Middle Class Envtalism IX

• Industrial resistance (envtalism hurts economic
  development), rather than deterring the
  middle-class eco-reformers, led envtalists to
  question their commitment to growth. (74)
• For them this is safe because the
  one-step-removed character of the middle class
  from production limited the effect that an
  economic downturn would have on the middle class.

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Anti-growth movements, race and production

• NOTE What do you make of Hurleys description of
  the social roots of anti-growth and its
  connection to the separation of the
  middle-class from minorities real production?

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Conditions of Production

• James OConnor (1989) Natural Causes. NY
  Guilford Press.
• Sees three crisis tendencies.
• Overproduction Crisis
• Fiscal Crisis
• Environmental Crises
• Ecological
• Personal
• Communal

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Conditions of Production II

• Overproduction crisis too much stuff, too few
  markets common to economic cycles.
• Fiscal crisis economic downturn ?
• business needs more public RD, new efficient
  infrastructures, and to pay fewer taxes, BUT
• people need more support and protection and to
  pay lower taxes
• BUT the state has fewer resources what to do?
• serve business ? irk people? 1920s, 50s, 80s,
  90s?
• serve people ? irk business? 1930s, 60s
• serve both ? deficit spending/debt? 1950s, 70s

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Conditions of Production III

• Nature, people and communities are not
  (re)produced like commodities.
• Nature is made by non-social means.
• People reproduce for cultural and affectual
  reasons.
• Communities are produced and maintained by people
  and governments.
• Business can treat nature, workers and
  communities as if they are disposable or
  depreciable as if they were commodities

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Conditions of Production IV

• Pollution, exhaustion, and intensive use degrade
  the health of nature, people, communities.
• The problem, for business is that depleted
  ecologies, unhealthy people, degraded
  communities are less productive than their rich,
  healthy, and vibrant counterparts.
• Also, depletion, sickness, inequality and
  degradation are sources of social movements that
  often resist business interests.

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Conditions of Production V

• Since environmental, labor/gender/etc., and
  community-based social movements generally make
  demands on the state for regulatory programs and
  enforcement
• the state is always a key player in the
  relationship between nature and business, labor
  and business, and communities and business.
• The key is that the real conditions of life, the
  politics of those conditions and the kinds of
  uses and production society generates are all key.

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What we see in Hurleys book, then, is

• a combination of
• economic and industrial development,
• struggles around politics, race and civil rights
  in the workplace and in the community,
• efforts of different groups to renegotiate their
  relationship with their environment through
  different appeals to the government.
• Of further note is the different role of women in
  each of these movements and the way womens
  changing position in society changes their
  position in (environmental and community) politics