- Between weeks 8 and 12, each student should provide a weekly reflection (500 words) on the data you have collected to date.
- What data did you collect?
- What is your initial impression of the data?
- How have the data you have collected this week changed/progressed your thinking about your research project?
- What challenges did you encounter while collecting the data?
- What are your next steps?
This week I began with compiling more background research on the environment and neoliberalism. Because the course materials only cover this topic very briefly, in a section of David Harvey’s book, I wanted to find other perspectives and create a stronger framework to work from. I went in hoping to find more sources that discuss the impact of neoliberalism both on the environment and on approaches to environmentalism. The policies of neoliberalism have an impact on how the environment is treated and on changes in environmental degradation, and I want to find sources that lay out the way that these policies impact the environment. The dominance of neoliberal policies also can impact the way environmental activists approach neoliberalism, which is what this project is really about. I hope to find sources that will provide the background on neoliberal policies that will provide a framework for how the environmental activists that I will study interact with these policies during the course of their activism.
What I have been finding is many sources that are about the neoliberalization of environmentalism. These sources posit that there is a dominant trend of neoliberal environmentalism that seeks to protect and improve the environment through market mechanisms. It suggests that neoliberalism has proven so dominant that even environmentalism utilizes these frameworks. It will be interesting to compare these arguments with the findings I collect from my interviews. I will now be looking to see if this is the kind of environmentalism being done by these young activists or if their activism takes a different form.
The other prominent concept that has appeared in this first foray is that of “ecosystem services.” From my understanding, the notion of “ecosystem services” is an attempt to commodify the environment in order to measure the benefits that humans receive from ecosystems. This is also related to “environmental governance,” which is how the government manages the environment, which these sources argue is directly related to capitalism and, thus, neoliberalism. These sources are closer to what I initially went searching for, which is the effect of neoliberal policies on the environment. These will provide a helpful background for the ways that the government and corporations approach the environment, and the concept of “ecosystem services” may provide a good grounding point for a framework that describes this relationship.
These initial findings point to a potential to include Wendy Brown’s work on economization in my framework. A recurring theme in many of these articles is the use of market principles with regards to the environment, which is consistent with Brown’s argument that neoliberalism leads to the economization of many different spheres of society. In this case, these sources have begun to point to the economization of the environment and of environmentalism, in that the environment is both regulated and protected using market principles, which means that Brown’s work is a useful supplement to this argument and connects it to the broader literature of neoliberalism.
One key next step for this project is to go through any necessary IRB procedures in order to begin contacting potential respondents so that I can start scheduling and completing interviews. I will not be able to move very far forward in my analysis until I have this data to work with, so it important that I start this next step as soon as possible.
I will do a general IRB for the whole class. So don’t worry about the IRB process for your research.
I agree that Wendy Brown’s framework would be helpful for your project. When you search for sources, try also to find sources that explicitly defend the benefits of neoliberalism for environment. By doing so, you can strengthen your argument in your project.
Also, I guess you will limit your focus to understanding the neoliberalization of environmentalism, right? So you will not talk about the impacts of neoliberal policies on the environment? This would be fine. I just want us to be on the same page about what your specific focus is.