Building More Inclusive Solidarities for Socio-Environmental Change: Lessons in Resistance from Southern Appalachia

It is increasingly recognized that socio-environmental justice will not be achieved through liberal and cosmopolitical forms of activism alone. Instead, more diverse and inclusive solidarities must be achieved across political ideologies for transformative change. By engaging with one constituency often overlooked by mainstream environmentalists—rural, conservative Americans—we argue for a situated solidarity that can be forged among people whose views of nature, community, and politics differ significantly. This framework rejects totalizing expressions of global ambition that erase important place-based differences. To explore this ethic, we examine a localized anti-fracking campaign in western North Carolina to determine how place-based forms of environmental resistance can be brought in closer connection with the cosmopolitical movement for climate and energy justice. This requires that cosmopolitical movements make room for more customary forms of cultural politics, while conservative movements look beyond their own place-based struggles to resist mutually experienced forms of oppression.