Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Comment, D. Rochleau, Claudia Radel

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

Brosius raises a series of questions that emanate from recent encounters between critical anthropology and environmental discourses and movements. Drawing upon insights from feminist theory, we propose to expand and enrich these questions as they relate to intersections of identity and environmental movements, policy, and positionality. Brosius’s analysis of research on environmental social movements, discourse, and images repeatedly touches on the complex processes of identity and representation. Perhaps most striking is his implicit dichotomization of essential and strategic identities. Our comments first focus on the issue of environmental essentialisms, their deployment by various actors, and their potential unmasking by researchers. …