Thinking Local, Acting Local: The Moral Boundaries of Local Belonging in Environmental Justice Activism

Background and Purpose: This study contributes to the analysis of space and place by empirically examining the meaning of local/nonlocal distinctions among environmental justice activists in India. Some claim that environmentalism represents the culmination of a progressive broadening of moral concern to ever-wider circles of belonging—from tribe, to nation, to humanity, to ecosystem (Singer, 1981). Likewise, for many, environmental activism is a practice of injecting such broad concern into our everyday lives: to think globally while acting locally (Carrier, 2008; Gatt, 2017). From this perspective, local activism is the building block for advancing environmental causes at regional, national, and global levels (Gupta 2014). But how well does this perspective capture the lived experience of those “local activists” who set out to protect their communities from environmental hazards? Through in-depth ethnographic study of an environmental justice movement in Kerala, India, this presentation explores the stakes in distinctions between local and nonlocal, focusing on the perspectives of so-called “locals.”

Methods: This presentation reports findings from twenty-five months of ethnographic research among two groups of environmental justice activists who collaborated on a campaign to shut down a gelatin factory in a village in central Kerala. The first group was an Action Council formed by people residing in the village. 24 informal interviews and 51 semi-structured interviews were conducted concurrently with 700 hours of participant observation. The second group was a solidarity network of environmental activists engaged in such campaigns throughout Kerala. 37 informal interviews and 60 semi-structured interviews were conducted concurrently with 900 hours of participant observation. Two researchers (the primary investigator and a trained local assistant) were present during participant observation, and fieldnotes were compared daily to reduce bias. In-situ coding employed MAXQDA qualitative analysis software to identify emergent themes, which were iteratively refined based on further analysis of fieldnotes, recordings, and interviews.

Results: While environmental activists from outside the village generally viewed the gelatin factory campaign as one protest within a larger movement, activists who called themselves “locals” (Malayalam nāṭṭukār) saw their activism differently. From their perspective, the purpose of the campaign was to protect their families and their village. Protecting the entire planet was beyond the scope of their concern or their agency. Moreover, being a “local” was defined by taking this approach to one’s activism—that is, by being someone who fought to protect one’s own people. While most locals resided in the polluted village, the distinction between locals and non-locals was not a spatial distinction—not a function of where one lived. Rather, “local” was a moral category defined by the scalar configuration of one’s values. This is demonstrated by cases of nonresident “locals” and resident “nonlocals.”

Implications: Distinctions that seem to based on location in space—like local/non-local or local/global—may actually be spatial projections of other scalar constructs, such as scales of ethical value. The analysis of space and place should proceed carefully to avoid misinterpreting the stakes in such distinctions.