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Arabica Robusta

Protest Inc. - the corporatization of protest - Reviews - The Ecologist - 0 views

  • Not all activists, as the authors several times take care to emphasise, are drawn into the world of corporations, branding, and global markets: grassroots actions continue, although their strength seems lessened.
  • One thing that seems to be happening is that "over the last two decades activist organisations have increasingly come to look like, think, and act like corporations". Three processes are helping this: what they call the securitization of dissent, the privatization of social life, and the institutionalisation of activism.
  • The US Nature Conservancy, for instance, is in partnership with companies that 'real' activists - and many other supporters only a few years ago - wouldn't want to be seen dead with: the likes of BP, Wal-Mart, and Monsanto. Greenpeace is given as an example of a NGO that has resisted corporatization more than some, yet "the scope of what [it] is calling a 'victory' is nonetheless instructive of how deep the process of institutionalisation is reaching".
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  • Perhaps Protest Inc. would convince more securely if the authors had allowed the contrary voices more chance to speak for themselves, so that they could be more thoroughly discussed. At present, the analysis seems curtailed.
  • The greatest danger would seem to be the rather obvious one (though that may be with hindsight): that ordinary consumers, brought up in a consumerist, capitalist, society, and addicted to what they consume, are assured that things are going well, and in the right direction, and will continue to do so, so long as we keep buying and consuming the right things. And doing the right things: we should ride a bike for cancer research, win a prize and help save the countryside we all love, buy a coke and save a polar bear ... But isn't this akin to sidelining what we say we are concerned about, and having a good time? Isn't this just very 'lazy environmentalism'?
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