Environmentalism in Popular Culture

by Sturgeon, Noel

• ISBN13: 9780816525812
• ISBN10: 0816525811
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-03-15
• Publisher: Univ of Arizona Pr

Summary

In this thoughtful and highly readable book, Noël Sturgeon illustrates the myriad and insidious ways in which American popular culture depicts social inequities as natural and how our images of nature interfere with creating solutions to environmental problems that are just and fair for all. Why is it, she wonders, that environmentalist messages in popular culture so often naturalize themes of heroic male violence, suburban nuclear family structures, and U.S. dominance in the world? And what do these patterns of thought mean for how we envision environmental solutions, like green businesses, recycling programs, and the protection of threatened species? Although there are other books that examine questions of culture and environment, this is the first book to employ a global feminist environmental justice analysis to focus on how racial inequality, gendered patterns of work, and heteronormative ideas about the family relate to environmental questions. Beginning in the late 1980s and moving to the present day, Sturgeon unpacks a variety of cultural tropes, including ideas about Mother Nature, the purity of the natural, and the allegedly close relationships of indigenous people with the natural world. She investigates the persistence of the myth of the frontier and its extension to the frontier of space exploration. She ponders the popularity (and occasional controversy) of penguins (and penguin family values) and questions assumptions about human warfare as natural. The book is intended to provoke debates among college students and graduate students, among their professors, among environmental activists, and among all citizens who are concerned with issues of environmental quality and social equality.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction: Developing a Global Feminist Environmental Justice Analysis to Understand the Politics of the Natural	p. 3
The Politics of the Natural in U.S. History and Popular Culture	p. 17
Naturalizing Frontiers
Frontiers of Nature: The Ecological Indian in U.S. Film	p. 53
"Forever New Frontiers": Extraterrestrialism and U.S. Militarism in Space	p. 80
Naturalizing Reproduction
"The Power Is Yours, Planeteers!" Race, Gender, and Sexuality in children's Environmentalist Popular Culture	p. 103
Penguin Family Values: The Nature of Planetary Environmental Reproductive Justice	p. 120
Naturalizing Globalization
Planetary Security, Militarism, and the Nature of Violence	p. 149
Purity and Privilege or Justice and Sustainability? Natural Consumers in the Global Economy	p. 171
Notes	p. 187
References	p. 199
Index	p. 217
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