What is an ecological identity?

Abstract

Is environmentalism a form of identity politics like feminism, race‐based politics, and other political orientations at the core of the new social movements? It is argued that it can be, but that this claim to political identity has so far only been clearly available to a narrow set of environmentalists, notably deep ecologists and essentialist ecofeminists. But if it is plausible that broader forms of environmentalism can represent a political identity, then political objections to the content of environmentalism become much more salient than they might at first appear. If environmentalists decide to articulate their environmentalism as a kind of ‘ecological identity’, then this identity will encounter serious hurdles that deserve attention.