Environmental Resentment on the Political Right

14 Responses

  1. Annis Pratt says:

    Dear Andy and Eric: a stunning, useful article. Have you heard of Groundwork (www.groundworkcenter.org) in Traverse City, MI that used to be the Michigan Land Use Institute? They do good work mediating between rural folk and urban environmentalists.
    Annis Pratt

  2. Andy Davey says:

    Annis,

    Thanks for your kind words about our essay. I had not heard of Groundwork but look forward to learning more about their work — thanks for the recommendation.

    Andy

  3. Chris Conz says:

    Thank you for a thoughtful review essay and I look forward to looking at these two books. The parallels between the foundations of rural identities and politics discussed here, and those in other parts of the world are striking. In my own work on rural Lesotho (southern Africa), I have found that in both past and present contexts people interacted with conservation policies in ways that depended as much on who implemented the policy as on what the underlying policy was. In other words, if the local chief who enforced grazing regulations was well respected, then the policy (whether or not based on appropriate knowledge) had a fair chance of “success.” So, in conjunction with environmental experiences, people’s identities are bound up in many layers of allegiances, be it to a hereditary local chief or a populist governor like Scott Walker.

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