{"id":980,"date":"2019-12-05T08:00:42","date_gmt":"2019-12-05T08:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=980"},"modified":"2019-12-10T18:23:10","modified_gmt":"2019-12-10T18:23:10","slug":"where-are-extinction-rebellions-cultural-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=980","title":{"rendered":"Where are Extinction Rebellion’s cultural roots?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maria Nita<\/em><\/p>\n

I would like to explore here some of the cultural roots and influences on the Extinction Rebellion movement, since this will shed light on the discourses that can be revived when XR is discussed in the public domain, be it by politicians, the general public or the media. For example, when climate activists are described as \u2018uncooperative crusties\u2019 in their \u2018heaving hemp-smelling bivouacs\u2019 (Rawlinson, 2019), we can recognise a well-established anti-hippie discourse which dominated public concerns over the free festivals in the UK, in the early 1970s. Such remarks are not dissimilar to those I found in my archival data from the free festivals, when the hippies were often vilified as \u2018smelly\u2019, \u2018long hair types\u2019, \u2018a lunatic fringe\u2019, \u2018drug pushers\u2019, \u2018addicts\u2019 and so on (Nita and Gemie, 2019). Surprisingly, it was the Christian clergy that had an important conciliatory tone and a role in recognizing the Christian values in the hippie movement \u2013 which in time helped legitimize the early festivals and indeed the ensuing, gone mainstream, festival culture.<\/p>\n

Early festivals, protestivals, non-violent disobedience<\/em><\/p>\n

We can trace some of XR\u2019s ideological and cultural roots in the early festival movement, as well as the earlier 1960s communes, which had a similar mix of civil disobedience, artivism \u2013 or artistic activism, cooperative ethos, communalism, and of course anticipating a world in deep crisis future which the commune could withstand (Miller, 1990). Certainly, as an heir of the early festivals \u2013 the \u2018protestival\u2019 \u2013 has been a common form of expression for the alter-globalization movements we have seen since the 1980s (St John, 2008), as well as many contemporary movements of artistic social reform, such as the global Occupy Movement in recent history (Tremlett, 2016). However, XR is also extending its countercultural roots, reaching out towards the mainstream, in new ways. The unprecedented urgency of the ecological crisis means that XR needs to reach many more people than the original Climate Movement was able to, and its inspiring policy of \u2018radical inclusivity\u2019 \u2013 welcoming \u2018everyone and every part of everyone\u2019 \u2013 can be seen an open invitation to those who might not see themselves as green activist material. By tracing its own non-violent disobedience origins to the civil rights movement, and often linking the movement to Martin Luther King and Gandhi, XR aims to widen its scope from an earlier Climate Movement that recognised its limitations as a largely white and middle class movement, to one that is entirely relevant to multicultural communities and current widespread concerns with inclusion: see for instance XR\u2019s swift response to condemn co-founder Roger Hallam\u2019s offensive remarks towards the Holocaust (November, 2019).<\/p>\n

A changed Climate Movement<\/em><\/p>\n

Having researched the Climate Movement as an ethnographer\/ anthropologist concerned with Christian and Muslim activists since 2008, I was naturally excited by its revival and re-invention as the Extinction Rebellion movement. A key driver for the renewal and growth of the Climate Movement was the publication of the last International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) report \u2013 which states that carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall dramatically by 2030 \u2013 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. Past this threshold \u2013 the changes will be catastrophic, with loss of many ecosystems. Back in the field, I could see that the fabric of this revived movement was tangibly and visually changed. If the \u2018early\u2019 Climate Movement had used colours of green, blue and white in many of its marches and global days of action, to represent the raising waters or the vanishing ice caps for example \u2013 XR flew back in and blocked big capital arteries and village capillaries with dramatic colours of extinction and grief, blood and funerals \u2013 deep reds and black being at the forefront of its performative actions, like the iconic Red Brigade pictured here.<\/p>\n

Can XR change our extinction trajectory?<\/em><\/p>\n

My research suggests that, notwithstanding the global growth and influence of contemporary non-violent resistance movements (Chenoweth and Stephan, 2011) \u2013 from Brazil’s indigenous tribes to the Arab Spring \u2013 we find in XR a model of protest and social change that is pivotally rooted in the cultural landscape of a post Christian society: a type of protest that is non-violent, sacrificial, communitarian and performative. More so, the small components of this model \u2013 the semiotics or internal grammar of performative actions \u2013 reveal a deeply familiar underlay. From XR songs to performative actions, such as \u2018die ins\u2019 \u2013 when protestors lie on the ground as if dead \u2013 to making their bodies go limp as they are being arrested and carried away by the police \u2013 we recognise in many XR public rituals a heroic vulnerability that has Christian resonance. Given my claim that Christianity represents an original and persistent model for cultural change (Nita, 2018), I have hope that XR can make as many of us as possible \u2013 and most importantly our political leaders \u2013 committed to a sustainable future, since this is the only one possible.<\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n

References:<\/em><\/p>\n

Chenoweth, Erica and Maria J. Stephan. 2011. Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. New York: Columbia University Press.
\nMiller, Timothy. 1990. The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond. Syracuse University Press.
\nNita, Maria. 2018. \u2018Christian Discourses and Cultural Change: The Greenbelt Art and Performance Festival as an Alternative Community for Green and Liberal Christians\u2019, Implicit Religion, 21 (1): 44-69.
\nNita, Maria and Sharif Gemie. 2019. \u2018Counterculture, Local Authorities and British Christianity at the Windsor and Watchfield Free Festivals (1972\u201375)\u2019 in Twentieth Century British History [online] https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/tcbh\/hwy053
\nRawlinson, Kevin. 2019. \u2018Extinction Rebellion\u2019, The Guardian, 8 Oct 2019 [online] http:\/\/bit.ly\/GuardianExtinctionRebelion [accessed 24 November 2019].
\nSt John, Graham. 2008. \u2018Protestival: Global Days of Action and Carnivalized Politics in the Present\u2019, Social Movement Studies, 7 (2): 167-190.
\nTremlett, Paul-Fran\u00e7ois. 2016 \u2018Affective Dissent in the Heart of the Capitalist Utopia: Occupy Hong Kong and the Sacred\u2019, Sociology, 50 (6): 1156-1169.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maria Nita I would like to explore here some of the cultural roots and influences on the Extinction Rebellion movement, since this will shed light on the discourses that can be revived when XR is discussed in the public domain, be it by politicians, the general public or the media. For example, when climate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":981,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[359,357,42,354,356,358,355],"class_list":["post-980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-climate","tag-environment","tag-environmentalism","tag-extinction-rebellion","tag-festivals","tag-globalization","tag-xr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=980"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":983,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions\/983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}