Self-defeating Environmentalism? Models and Questions from an Ethnography of Toxic Waste Protest

Abstract Drawing on an ethnographic account of toxic waste protest in post-reunification Germany, the article compares three models of environmental activism (by Douglas and Wildavsky, Melucci and Latour respectively) which problematize the production of knowledge. Insights from social studies of science are used to examine the entanglement of language and matter in en-vironmentalism. The article suggests, however, that unless scholars pay due attention to the way they frame their questions, they are at risk of finding their work irrelevant or impotent. On the other hand, it suggests that to achieve relevance and power, empirical, particularly ethnographic accounts, which emerge out of a meeting between activism and academia, are also required. Keywords environmentalism Germany nature science studies toxic waste This article has two complementary sources – hardly unusual but they are worth stating clearly – an ethnographic encounter with a group of German toxic waste protesters, and a scholarly engagement with anthropology and related disciplines. The research, carried out in the aftermath of Germa