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ABSTRACT
In this paper, the potential for applying deliberative disobedience as a legitimation framework for environmental disobedience is unpacked. At present, disobedience on behalf of non-humans is not justified within the liberal theory of disobedience put forward by Rawls. Instead of framing harms to environment as indirect harms to humans, Smith’s framework of deliberative disobedience may be invoked on the premises that disobedients publicize not fundamental rights violations, but systematically distorted communication in the process that enacted the environmental policy or decision. To this end, the paper engages in a critical discussion about the dangers of legitimating environmental disobedience through deliberative disobedience. Indeed, its justification hinges on possessing deliberative or “dialogic” credentials as an alternative mode of address to distorted official channels. But its consequence, that of characterizing environmental disobedience as dialogic, means embracing the increasingly violent, clandestine and coercive acts as dialogue. I argue, this from deliberative premises with precarious implications for the legitimacy and uptake of environmental disobedients.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on Contribtuor
Erica von Essen is a Ph.D. researcher with the Environmental Communication Division at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Her research topics include contestation and resistance in the context of wildlife and environmental issues; political animal theory and deliberative democracy.
Notes
1. Welchman, “Is Ecosabotage Civil Disobedience?”; Hirsch-Hoefler and Mudde, “Ecoterrorism.”
2. McClanahan, “Green and Grey.”
3. Smith, Civil Disobedience.
4. Ibid.
5. von Essen and Allen, “Reconsidering Illegal Hunting.”
6. McClanahan, “Green and Grey.”
7. See Welchman, “Is Ecosabotage Civil Disobedience?”; Vanderheiden, “Eco-terrorism or Justified Resistance?”; McCausland et al., “Trespass, Animals and Democratic Engagement.”
8. Benhabib, Democracy and Difference.
9. Rawls, Theory of Justice.
10. Markovitz, “Democratic Disobedience.”
11. Martin, “Slow Injustice.”
12. Brownlee, Conscience and Conviction.
13. Dobson, Citizenship and the Environment.
14. Hettinger, “Environmental Disobedience.”
15. Based on Tarrow, “Cycles of Collective Action.”
16. Hayward, “Constitutional Environmental Rights.”
17. Markovitz, “Democratic Disobedience.”
18. Ibid. 1944.
19. Healey, “The Pragmatic Tradition.”
20. Bohman, Public Deliberation.
21. Clausen et al., Democracy and Sustainability.
22. Markovitz, “Democratic Disobedience.”
23. Smith, Civil Disobedience.
24. von Essen, “Whose Discourse is it Anyway?”
25. Clegg, Frameworks of Power; Young, “Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy.”
26. Seel, “Strategies of Resistance”; von Essen, “Whose Discourse is it Anyway?”
27. Smith, Civil Disobedience; von Essen et al., “The Radicalization of Rural Resistance.”
28. Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere.”
29. Vanderheiden, “Eco-terrorism or Justified Disobedience?”
30. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars.
31. Seel, “Strategies of Resistance”; Thomassen, “Within the Limits.”
32. Young, “Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy.”
33. Caraus, Cosmopolitanism of Dissent.
34. Hollander and Einwohner, “Conceptualizing Resistance”; MacLure et al., “Silence as Resistance.”
35. Kerkvliet, “Everyday Politics.”
36. Hardt and Negri, Multitude.
37. Futrell and Brents, “Protest as Terrorism?”
38. Scott, Weapons of the Weak; Tarrow, “Cycles of Collective Action”; von Essen et al., “The Radicalisation of Rural Resistance.”
39. Scott, Weapons of the Weak; Hollander and Einwohner, “Conceptualizing Resistance.”
40. Cheong and Lundry, “Prosumption, Transmediation, and Resistance.”
41. Mertes, Movement of Movements.
42. Sewell, “Ideologies and Social Revolutions.”
43. Vinthagen and Johansson, “Everyday Resistance.”
44. Kaplan and Kelly, “Rethinking Resistance.”
45. Kopstein, “Does Everyday Resistance Matter.”
46. Ortner, “Resistance”; Brown, “On Resisting Resistance.”
47. Kaplan and Kelly, “Rethinking Resistance.”
48. Hoffman, “Turning Power Inside Out”; Hollander and Einwohner, “Conceptualizing Resistance.”
49. Seel, “Strategies of Resistance.”
50. Narula, “The Story of Narmada Bachao Andolan.”
51. Becker, “Calling Foul.”
52. Hardman.
53. Holmes, Protection, Politics and Protest.
54. Simi and Futrell, “Negotiating White Power Activist Stigma.”
55. Theodossopoulos, “On De-Pathologizing Resistance,” 422.
56. Ibid.
57. Jarboe, Testimony https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/the-threat-of-eco-terrorism.
58. Thomassen, “Within the Limits.”
59. Welchman, “Is Ecosabotage Civil Disobedience?”
60. Young, “Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy.”
61. Theodossopoulos, “On De-Pathologizing Resistance.”
62. Latorre et al., “Commodification of Nature.”
63. von Essen et al., “The Radicalisation of Rural Resistance.”
64. Holmes, Protection, Politics and Protest.
65. Smith, Civil Disobedience.
66. Brownlee, Conscience and Conviction.
67. Eckersley, Ecocentric Discourses.
68. Allen, “Civil Disobedience and Terrorism.”
69. Smith, Civil Disobedience.
70. Dryzek, “Rhetoric in Democracy.”
71. Becker, “Calling Foul.”
72. Arendt, “Civil Disobedience.”
73. Mittelman, “Globalisation and Environmental Resistance.”
74. Craig, “Communication Theory.”
75. Chang and Butchart, “Introduction.”
76. Smith, “A Constitutional Niche”; Eckersley, Ecocentric Discourses.
77. von Essen and Allen, “Reconsidering Illegal Hunting.”
78. Rothfusz, “Civil Disobedience.”
79. von Essen and Allen, “Reconsidering Illegal Hunting.”
80. Smith, Civil Disobedience.
81. Austin, Things with Words.
82. Wee, “Extreme Communicative Acts.”
83. Donaldson and Kymlicka, Zoopolis.
84. Seel, “Strategies of Resistance”; Ceva, “Political Justification through Democratic Participation.”
85. Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Bondaroff, “From Advocacy to Confrontation.”
86. Smith and Brassett, “Law, Interrupted.”
87. Singer, “Disobedience as Plea for Reconsideration.”
88. Smith, Civil Disobedience.
89. Gebh, “Democratic Disobedience.”
90. Smith, Civil Disobedience.
91. Simi and Futrell, “Negotiating White Power Activist Stigma.”
92. Smith, Civil Disobedience.
93. Simmons, “Disobedience.”
94. Hollander and Einwohner, “Conceptualizing Resistance”; Rothfusz, “Civil Disobedience.”
95. Seel, “Strategies of Resistance”; Latorre et al., “Commodification of Nature.”
96. Maeseele, “Beyond the Post-Political Zeitgest.”
97. Mouffe, “Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism.”
98. Ganesh and Zoller, “Dialogue, Activism”; Maeseele, “Beyond the Post-Political Zeitgest.”
99. Markova, “Through the Mind.”
100. Sanders, “Against Deliberation”; Olafsson, “Defiance.”
101. Young, “Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy.”
102. Bond, “Negotiating a ‘Democratic Ethos,’” 175.
103. Dobson, Citizenship and the Environment.
104. Bond, “Negotiating a ‘Democratic Ethos.’”
105. White and Farr, “No-Saying.”
106. Warren, “What Should and Should Not Be Said”; Smith, Civil Disobedience; Bohman, Public Deliberation.
107. Graumann, “Commonality, Mutuality, Reciprocity.”
108. Welchman, “Is Ecosabotage Civil Disobedience?”
109. Rothfusz, “Civil Disobedience.”
110. Martin and Varney, Nonviolence Speaks.
111. Smith, “A Constitutional Niche.”
112. Garrett, “Utilitarianism, Vegetarianism, and Human Health.”
113. Hall, “Legal Toleration.”
114. Gledhill, “A Case for Rethinking Resistance.”
115. Gantchev, The Cost of Activist Monitoring.
116. Piven and Cloward, Poor People’s Movements.
117. Lovell, Crimes of Dissent.
118. Mouffe, “Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism.”
119. Simi and Futrell, “Negotiating White Power Activist Stigma.”
120. Bohman, Public Deliberation.
121. Arendt, Civil Disobedience.
122. Habermas, “Civil Disobedience.”
123. Cornwall and Goetz, “Democratizing Democracy.”