Environmental Evaporation: The Invisibility of Environmental Concern in Food System Change

• In Event: 315 - Open Refereed Roundtables Session. B. Table 01 Shared and Contested Spaces
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 10. Social Movements and Unions

Abstract

Overcoming the barriers to ecological sustainability requires extensive civic engagement. In many respects, citizens have met this challenge yet, despite widespread environmental concern and activism, the structures that threaten the biosphere persist. Using data from a qualitative, comparative case study of local food movements in three Canadian cities, I introduce the concept “environmental evaporation” to explain how activism may inadvertently reproduce dominant – particularly individualistic and market-oriented – social structures. Environmental evaporation refers to the process by which individual concern for the environment disappears in public life. Private environmental concerns “evaporate” because themes relating to the environment are viewed as too polarizing to catalyze broad support and necessary allegiances with elite actors. Understanding the process of environmental evaporation has the potential to catalyze future research into the complex relationship between collective action and structural change.

Author

• Emily Huddart Kennedy, Washington State University