Book Review: Pradyumna P. Karan and Unryu Suganuma (Eds.) Local environmental movements: a comparative study of the United States and Japan. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2008. ISBN 978-0-8131-2488-9

[Extract] Over the past 40 years, democratisation, decentralisation, and local social movements have changed the way governments and citizens approach environmental problems across the developing and postindustrial world (Morrison & Lane, in press). Karan and Suganuma have edited an interesting collection of diverse case studies of local environmental movements in the United States and Japan. This collection is the product of an international conference held at the University of Kentucky in 2003 attended by scholars, nonprofit professionals, and consultants from the United States and Japan. The collection can be read alongside more critical works such as Sorensen's The Making of Urban Japan (2004), Schwartz and Pharr's edited collection on The State of Civil Society in Japan (2003), Diani and McAdam's edited collection on Social Movements and Networks (2003), and Pharr and Putnam's edited collection on Disaffected Democracies (2000). There is some passing reference to the literature on civil society and social movements, but the intention of this book is really to illustrate and promote the work of local environmental movements in the two countries