ABSTRACT
Environmentalism signifies on the complex and variegated body of ideas and ideologies about the environment. There is little agreement over when the term environmentalism was first used in social science. The difficulty in tracing a common root of environmental thought, at least in Western European intellectual history, is due to the basic dualism inherent in the notion of environmentalism. One of the fields that have produced a rich literature on environmentalism regards the intersection, juxtaposition or opposition of local and global practices. This issue has sometimes been overexposed in the social sciences, so as to create a jargonized view of the contemporary features of political activism in the environmental sector. The reason why the author finds it useful to introduce, finally, some insights into the binary use of the terms local-global, which is not in real opposition, is because this debate is particularly relevant for the case studies.
