Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another

Abstract

protection, hunting and wildlife groups. This important historical discussion traces how environmentalism as an ideology derives from managerial interests. The discussion then rolls into the development of wildlife management organizations before returning to the historical account of conservation and preservation organizations. This chapter includes a great deal of interesting information but it is presented to the reader in a series of historical traverses through what the author is calling discursive frames. This means that one goes back and forth through time in several rounds, tracing out a few components of the discourseâs principles and key objectives, and linking them to institutional growth and change. This leaves the reader with a rather schizophrenic perspective, not with a clear way to understand these discourses in relation to each other or to their own organizational structures. Chapter 8 looks at reform environmentalism, what the author calls the most dominant environmental discourse today. Again there is an interesting discussion of the origins of reform environmentalism in the miasma theory of nineteenth century Britain, in Malthusâ writings, in the Sanitary movement and in other moments in time. But when the discussion ends with an outline of the current income sources for reform environmental organizations as an aggregate, it fails to make the connections between the legacies of the past and the task of assessing the composition and agendas of contemporary organizations. Brulle finds that reform environmentalism fosters the development of oligarchic organizations that in turn keep them isolated from the members they represent. But, unfortunately he does not work out the way in which the discourses he has outlined are substantiated to create these organizational structures. Rather, discourses are extrapolated from data on membership, income sources and historical reviews. Chapter 9 reviews the alternate discourses of deep ecology, environmental justice, eco-feminism, and ecotheology. Again the historical discussions of these trajectories are interesting but the author ends up using structural data to make an argument about discourse. The author uses chapter ten to sum up the environmental movement, confusing further what this collectivity means. His substantive chapters summarized separate but often cross-cutting discourses over time, but this chapter assumes a contemporary movement, divides various environmental organizations, and looks at organizational categories (net worth, membership, political structure, and accountability to the membership and the wider public). In the final chapter, Brulle brings the discussion back to his starting point in critical theory but only to conclude with an ideal. The ideal is to democratize environmental organizations, make them more responsive to member participation and increase the range of voices that are considered legitimate players in the public sphere. While the reader may agree with the goal, there is no clear path for getting there set out in this book, and though inclusive in focus and insightful in parts, no clear way to understand how it is that communicative action can halt ecological degradation.