Ruiz-Junco N (2011) ‘Losing Neutrality in Your Everyday Life’: Framing Experience and Activist Identity Construction in the Spanish Environmental Movement. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 40(6): 713–733. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0891241611420842
Who are you? What is your identity?
These are surprising complex questions. One of the first things a sociology or human geography student will be taught is that none of us have just one identity: we have many. One identity or another will be dominant or more pertinent depending on the situation. For example, if I attend a concert, I would most likely be listening as a musician. If I care for my parents when they are unwell, I am a loving daughter. At work I am both “a researcher” and a “junior colleague” when viewed in the context of my peers.
The identities mentioned above are very clear-cut examples, and they are categorical labels which I recognise and accept. But there are probably lots of identities which others may ascribe to me that I do not accept. For example, as a child, I had a short haircut (this was before pixie cuts on girls were fashionable) and people called me a ‘tomboy’. I could never understand why they said that, because my understanding of what that meant involved climbing trees and sailing small boats or similar (I read Swallows and Amazons around that time). It’s only with 20-odd years of hindsight that I realise they assumed I was gay and didn’t know it.
In my research, I have a keen interest in environmentalism. For my doctoral study, I investigated the possible success or failure of pro-nuclear environmentalism with environmentalists who weren’t affiliated with the larger, more high-profile environmental organisations. The reasoning behind this was that previously, an anti-nuclear stance was the default within the environmental movement. Pro-nuclear environmentalists were an interesting new kind of environmentalist, and I was curious to see if and how it could ‘catch on’. The most immediate and clearest finding from the data, however, was that none of my participants viewed themselves as ‘environmentalists.’
All my participants were recruited because they were in some manner demonstrably environmentally conscious. Many were affiliated with local conservation groups or had made significant lifestyle changes, such as a move to veganism, because of their environmental concerns. Yet none of them considered themselves to be environmentalists or felt they were a part of the environmental movement. A key reason for this was that their environmental ideals far outstripped their material ability to enact those ideals. None of them felt their actions to be sufficiently coherent with their environmental values. They had not yet achieved personal coherence.
‘Personal coherence’ is a concept from the work of Natalia Ruiz-Junco (2011) who reflected on the criticality displayed by Spanish environmental activists when reflecting on their lifestyles and actions with respect to their environmental concerns and values. They all felt “compelled to make sacrifices” in their daily lives, to ensure that their daily routines gradually came closer to being in “harmony” with their environmental values (see Ruiz-Junco, 2011: 14).
Reflecting on my participants’ feelings towards their own environmental harmony or disharmony, I see that personal coherence is something they were all working towards in different ways. Each of them had a unique perspective, and different means available to them, which ensured that no two paths were the same. With that comes the understanding that ‘environmentalism’ can be more usefully understood as a journey from one end of the environmentalist/non-environmentalist spectrum to the other. The means of travelling is the process of personal coherence, and anyone on that journey is already an environmentalist; they are just consciously moving further toward the ‘deep green’ end of the spectrum.
Thinking of it as a gradual process of change has enabled me to progress further towards achieving personal coherence in my own life. Rather than thinking “there’s so much I should be doing” I’ve instead decided to make one small change at a time. The first thing I decided to focus on was simply reducing my use of single-use plastics. I made swaps, looked up alternatives, found sustainable businesses and so on. I found it was important to give these habits or swaps time to settle because there so many alternative options available, so my first choice of an alternative shampoo bar, for example, might not be one that suits. Once I found the products that suited me, I could focus on the next change.
I found it helps if the aspect of your life that you pick to change is one that lends itself to the change. I could not indulge my passion for gardening, for example, until we moved into a house which has a garden – and now I am in the process of turning it into an allotment garden. Likewise, now that we have more room I can sew again and I’m enjoying making my own clothes: and, even better, I no longer have the lingering guilt of contributing to the horrific social, economic and environmental shitshow that is fast fashion.
Should any of my three readers feel like making their own swaps, I list my recommendations below 😊
- Lots of great options available from www.peacewiththewild.co.uk
- The BEST shampoo and conditioner bars from www.gruum.com, and they sell other things too.
- After much trouble with various deodorant replacements, I now swear by the eucalyptus-scented re-fill roll-on deodorant from www.lifesupplies.com and, again, they sell many other things as well.
All the above give the option to have various things put on a subscription, for a reduced cost, and will send you refills in the post packed in recyclable packaging. It makes the whole process very easy.
It is, however, true that choosing the ‘eco’ option is still a luxury. Because the businesses are smaller, the productions runs are smaller, and the ingredients don’t have the same shelf life (because fewer toxic chemicals), the cost is higher. BUT you get the satisfaction of knowing you have made a step in the right direction and, frankly, in a world where our ability to affect direct change seems to be so drastically diminished, that counts for a lot.
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