ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides an overview of environmental movements in Western Europe. It looks at the other side of what once was called the Iron Curtain and focuses on the development of environmental activism and protest in Central Eastern Europe after 1989. The book examines environmental movements in Asia, and focuses on the Arab world – the Middle East and North Africa – a region where economic and social concerns usually overshadow environmental concerns. It also examines the anti-nuclear movements as well as their historical transformations in the US where they started and also in Europe and a few Asian countries. The book also focuses on how political consumerism contributes to shaping citizens’ relation to politics. It retraces the origin of the movement and how articulating new vocabularies such as “environmental racism” was critical to its initial period of mobilization.
