ABSTRACT
Since the 1990s, the question has been repeatedly posed whether environmentalism should still be conceived as a grassroots, participatory social movement. Some have argued that it should not, as environmental organisations have long acted mostly as scientific and policy innovators in a number of institutionalised settings and milieus, in the political as well as in the cultural, in the academic as well as in the industrial sphere. Accordingly, the tools of mainstream collective action theories would not be appropriate to capture recent developments, as environmentalists would engage primarily in cultural production rather than in political representation (e.g. Jamison, 2001). The association between environmental movements and grassroots politics has also been challenged, from a very different angle, by political analysts who have stressed the institutionalisation of those actors as interest groups (e.g. Jordan & Maloney, 1997).
