Environmentalism in Popular Culture: Gender, Race, Sexuality, and the Politics of the Natural

Purists may find it distasteful to speak of the “environment” and “popular culture” in the same breath. In recent years, though, precipitated by the work of William Cronon, Andrew Ross, and Donna Haraway, eco-cultural scholars have begun to dispel the myth that nature exists outside of culture. Rather, nature is imbricated both materially and discursively in social politics and values, and vice versa. By combining cultural studies, global feminism, and environmental justice, Sturgeon shows that popular culture may indeed be the best arena in which to work toward the goal of global environmental justice. Building on an emerging “environmental cultural studies,” Sturgeon's book contributes a new approach—what she terms “global feminist environmental justice”—to understanding links between cultural politics of nature and social justice in the post-Cold-War era. Sturgeon contends that mainstream environmentalist narratives “naturalize” social inequalities through popular culture in ways that ironically undermine the environment and reinforce unequal power relations.