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Attitudes and Orientations of Environmentally-concerned Citizens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

James S. Bowman
James S. Bowman
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming 82071, U.S.A.; also Office of Coastal Zone Management, United States Department of Commerce, 3900 Whitehaven Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20235, U.S.A.
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Extract

The changing fortunes of ecological issues in American society suggest the importance of citizen attention and attitudes to environmental problems. Only a few studies since Earth Day, 1970, have focused on a key group of political actors in natural resource politics—environmental activists. The great variety of issues that are of interest to environmentally-concerned individuals suggest that important differences exist among environmentalists regarding the nature of ecological problems.

The present paper examines the attitudes of these people and how they have defined the extent and character of the ecological crisis. By adopting an analytical framework that described levels of environmental understanding, this analysis has attempted to explore belief-structures within the environmental movement and the implications of these beliefs for future change. The evidence revealed that, while environmentalism is not a monolithic social movement, a substantial majority of the respondents to sets of questions about key issues were in the ‘reformist’ mode of environmental activity—that is, environmental problems are reasonably well understood by these activists, the origins of environmental problems are seen by them in terms of consumption and production activities in society, and these attitudes demand political action that is compatible with existing institutions.

Type
Main Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , Winter 1977 , pp. 259 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 1977

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