Greening Brazil: Environmental Activism in State and Society
by Kathryn Hochstetler and Margaret E. Keck
Duke University Press, 2007 Paper: 978-0-8223-4031-7 | Cloth: 978-0-8223-4048-5 | eISBN: 978-0-8223-9059-6 Library of Congress Classification GE199.B6H63 2007 Dewey Decimal Classification 333.720981
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Greening Brazil challenges the claim that environmentalism came to Brazil from abroad. Two political scientists, Kathryn Hochstetler and Margaret E. Keck, retell the story of environmentalism in Brazil from the inside out, analyzing the extensive efforts within the country to save its natural environment, and the interplay of those efforts with transnational environmentalism. The authors trace Brazil’s complex environmental politics as they have unfolded over time, from their mid-twentieth-century conservationist beginnings to the contemporary development of a distinctive socio-environmentalism meant to address ecological destruction and social injustice simultaneously. Hochstetler and Keck argue that explanations of Brazilian environmentalism—and environmentalism in the global South generally—must take into account the way that domestic political processes shape environmental reform efforts.
The authors present a multilevel analysis encompassing institutions and individuals within the government—at national, state, and local levels—as well as the activists, interest groups, and nongovernmental organizations that operate outside formal political channels. They emphasize the importance of networks linking committed actors in the government bureaucracy with activists in civil society. Portraying a gradual process marked by periods of rapid advance, Hochstetler and Keck show how political opportunities have arisen from major political transformations such as the transition to democracy and from critical events, including the well-publicized murders of environmental activists in 1988 and 2004. Rather than view foreign governments and organizations as the instigators of environmental policy change in Brazil, the authors point to their importance at key moments as sources of leverage and support.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Kathryn Hochstetler is Professor of Political Science at the University of New Mexico. She is a coauthor of Sovereignty, Democracy, and Global Civil Society: State-Society Relations at UN World Conferences and a coeditor of Palgrave Advances in International Environmental Politics.
Margaret E. Keck is Professor of Political Science at The Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of The Workers’ Party and Democratization in Brazil and a coauthor of Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics.
REVIEWS
“Greening Brazil is an extremely interesting, insightful, and important book. It is important precisely because it fills a huge gap in outsiders’ understanding of Brazil’s internal politics on environmental issues, providing insights into an often misunderstood country whose environmental performance has truly global implications.”—J. Timmons Roberts, coauthor of Trouble in Paradise: Globalization and Environmental Crises in Latin America
“Kathryn Hochstetler and Margaret E. Keck have vast and complementary direct experiences with environmental reform in Brazil, and their long-term commitment to following these issues has clearly paid off in their analysis of the country’s long, rich, and distinctive reform history.”—Jonathan Fox, University of California, Santa Cruz
“Greening Brazil is a superb analysis of the growth of the Brazilian environmental movement since the 1950s. The authors bring to the task a sophisticated understanding of Brazilian politics and a deep knowledge of international trends in environmental politics. Greening Brazil is the most satisfying account yet written of any environmental movement outside of Europe and the United States.”
-- Angus Wright Latin American Politics and Society
“Greening Brazil is a vital contribution for readers interested in the development of social environmentalism in Brazil, as well as the recent rise in environmental politics in Brazil and Latin America. Kathryn Hochstetler and Margaret Keck . . . produce a persuasive view of the social, institutional, and governmental interactions that have shaped governance of the environmental movement and politics in Brazil. . . . It should be seen as a pioneering book in the field, hopefully encouraging more research on the subject.”
-- Isabel DiVanna Canadian Journal of History
“Greening Brazil, a breakthrough book, makes an outstanding contribution to this puzzle. It demonstrates how small agencies in low salience issue areas confronting powerful detractors survive, expand and make a difference. Kathryn Hochstetler and Margaret Keck persuasively argue that extensive interpersonal and professional networks carefully cultivated by key leaders, along with their finely honed discernment over which battles to fight and how to fight them, are the key explanatory factors. . . . Moreover, the book is a vivid example of how to advance knowledge, informed by theory, on the real workings of Latin American institutions beyond deductive analyses of pathologies in institutional design followed by prescriptions on how to fix them.”
-- Eduardo Silva Journal of Latin American Studies
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables viii
Preface ix
List of Acronyms and Organizations xv
Introduction 1
1. Building Environmental Institutions: National Environmental Politics and Policy 23
2. National Environmental Activism: The Changing Terms of Engagement 63
3. From Protest to Project: The Third Wave of Environmental Activism 97
4. Amazonia 140
5. From Pollution Control to Sustainable Cities 186
Conclusion 223
Appendix: List of Interviews 231
Notes 239
Bibliography 249
Index 273
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Greening Brazil: Environmental Activism in State and Society
by Kathryn Hochstetler and Margaret E. Keck
Duke University Press, 2007 Paper: 978-0-8223-4031-7 Cloth: 978-0-8223-4048-5 eISBN: 978-0-8223-9059-6
Greening Brazil challenges the claim that environmentalism came to Brazil from abroad. Two political scientists, Kathryn Hochstetler and Margaret E. Keck, retell the story of environmentalism in Brazil from the inside out, analyzing the extensive efforts within the country to save its natural environment, and the interplay of those efforts with transnational environmentalism. The authors trace Brazil’s complex environmental politics as they have unfolded over time, from their mid-twentieth-century conservationist beginnings to the contemporary development of a distinctive socio-environmentalism meant to address ecological destruction and social injustice simultaneously. Hochstetler and Keck argue that explanations of Brazilian environmentalism—and environmentalism in the global South generally—must take into account the way that domestic political processes shape environmental reform efforts.
The authors present a multilevel analysis encompassing institutions and individuals within the government—at national, state, and local levels—as well as the activists, interest groups, and nongovernmental organizations that operate outside formal political channels. They emphasize the importance of networks linking committed actors in the government bureaucracy with activists in civil society. Portraying a gradual process marked by periods of rapid advance, Hochstetler and Keck show how political opportunities have arisen from major political transformations such as the transition to democracy and from critical events, including the well-publicized murders of environmental activists in 1988 and 2004. Rather than view foreign governments and organizations as the instigators of environmental policy change in Brazil, the authors point to their importance at key moments as sources of leverage and support.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Kathryn Hochstetler is Professor of Political Science at the University of New Mexico. She is a coauthor of Sovereignty, Democracy, and Global Civil Society: State-Society Relations at UN World Conferences and a coeditor of Palgrave Advances in International Environmental Politics.
Margaret E. Keck is Professor of Political Science at The Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of The Workers’ Party and Democratization in Brazil and a coauthor of Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics.
REVIEWS
“Greening Brazil is an extremely interesting, insightful, and important book. It is important precisely because it fills a huge gap in outsiders’ understanding of Brazil’s internal politics on environmental issues, providing insights into an often misunderstood country whose environmental performance has truly global implications.”—J. Timmons Roberts, coauthor of Trouble in Paradise: Globalization and Environmental Crises in Latin America
“Kathryn Hochstetler and Margaret E. Keck have vast and complementary direct experiences with environmental reform in Brazil, and their long-term commitment to following these issues has clearly paid off in their analysis of the country’s long, rich, and distinctive reform history.”—Jonathan Fox, University of California, Santa Cruz
“Greening Brazil is a superb analysis of the growth of the Brazilian environmental movement since the 1950s. The authors bring to the task a sophisticated understanding of Brazilian politics and a deep knowledge of international trends in environmental politics. Greening Brazil is the most satisfying account yet written of any environmental movement outside of Europe and the United States.”
-- Angus Wright Latin American Politics and Society
“Greening Brazil is a vital contribution for readers interested in the development of social environmentalism in Brazil, as well as the recent rise in environmental politics in Brazil and Latin America. Kathryn Hochstetler and Margaret Keck . . . produce a persuasive view of the social, institutional, and governmental interactions that have shaped governance of the environmental movement and politics in Brazil. . . . It should be seen as a pioneering book in the field, hopefully encouraging more research on the subject.”
-- Isabel DiVanna Canadian Journal of History
“Greening Brazil, a breakthrough book, makes an outstanding contribution to this puzzle. It demonstrates how small agencies in low salience issue areas confronting powerful detractors survive, expand and make a difference. Kathryn Hochstetler and Margaret Keck persuasively argue that extensive interpersonal and professional networks carefully cultivated by key leaders, along with their finely honed discernment over which battles to fight and how to fight them, are the key explanatory factors. . . . Moreover, the book is a vivid example of how to advance knowledge, informed by theory, on the real workings of Latin American institutions beyond deductive analyses of pathologies in institutional design followed by prescriptions on how to fix them.”
-- Eduardo Silva Journal of Latin American Studies
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables viii
Preface ix
List of Acronyms and Organizations xv
Introduction 1
1. Building Environmental Institutions: National Environmental Politics and Policy 23
2. National Environmental Activism: The Changing Terms of Engagement 63
3. From Protest to Project: The Third Wave of Environmental Activism 97
4. Amazonia 140
5. From Pollution Control to Sustainable Cities 186
Conclusion 223
Appendix: List of Interviews 231
Notes 239
Bibliography 249
Index 273
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE