“Discuss how ‘environmentalism’ can be explained with new social movements approach.” (2022)
The new social movements (NSM) approach holds that post-1960s movements in advanced societies are organised around identity, culture and quality of life rather than class and redistribution. Environmentalism is its textbook case, from the anti-nuclear and Green movements of Western Europe to today’s climate strikes. The approach explains a great deal about environmentalism, but in India it has to be stretched.
How the NSM approach explains environmentalism
| NSM theorist | Core argument | Application to environmentalism |
|---|---|---|
| Alain Touraine | In a post-industrial “programmed society”, conflict is over historicity, that is, who controls society’s model of development | His team studied French anti-nuclear protest (1980) as a struggle against technocracy |
| Jürgen Habermas | The “system” of markets and bureaucracy colonises the lifeworld (The Theory of Communicative Action, 1981) | Ecological protest defends everyday life and nature against commodification |
| Claus Offe (1985) | NSMs draw on the new middle class, pursue non-negotiable values and organise loosely, outside the left-right divide | The German Greens (1980), anti-party politics |
| Alberto Melucci (Nomads of the Present, 1989) | Movements build collective identity and challenge dominant cultural codes | Fridays for Future (2018) made “climate generation” an identity |
| Ronald Inglehart (The Silent Revolution, 1977) | Materially secure generations adopt post-material values | Explains the educated, urban base of Western environmentalism |
| Ulrich Beck (Risk Society, 1986) | Manufactured risks create “sub-politics” outside parliament | Chernobyl (1986), climate change |
NSM-style environmentalism shows networked organisation, symbolic direct action (human chains, sit-ins) and reliance on courts and media rather than parties. In India, urban middle-class campaigns like Save Aarey (Mumbai, 2019) and Delhi’s clean-air litigation fit closely.
Where the approach falls short in India
- “Environmentalism of the poor.” Ramachandra Guha and Joan Martínez-Alier (Varieties of Environmentalism, 1997) argue that Southern environmentalism grows out of livelihood, not post-material affluence.
- Chipko (Chamoli, 1973): in The Unquiet Woods (1989), Guha shows village women hugging trees to defend fodder and fuel against commercial felling. Subsistence was pitted against profit, and “red” and “green” issues were fused.
- Narmada Bachao Andolan (from the mid-1980s, led by Medha Patkar) combined displacement, Adivasi identity, livelihood and a critique of big-dam development.
- Madhav Gadgil and Guha (Ecology and Equity, 1995) describe a conflict between resource-hungry “omnivores” and “ecosystem people”, which is a class-like cleavage the NSM model underplays. They also trace distinct ideological strands, among them crusading Gandhians, appropriate technologists and ecological Marxists.
- Ladakh (2024–25): Sonam Wangchuk’s fasts joined fragile-ecology concerns to demands for Sixth Schedule protection. Wangchuk’s detention under the National Security Act (September 2025 to March 2026) shows that these movements confront the state directly, not just “civil society”.
- Outcomes are often institutional, as with the Forest Rights Act, 2006, which blurs the line NSM theory draws between old and new movements.
Conclusion
The NSM approach explains the form, identity and cultural politics of environmentalism well, especially its urban and transnational versions. India’s ecological movements, however, are also struggles over land, water and forests. A fuller explanation combines NSM theory with political economy, as Guha and Gadgil do: an environmentalism that is at once about identity and about survival.