Relationship Building and People Work

Abstract

Environmental activism is often studied as a social movement that advocates on behalf of marginalized populations who are faced with environmental injustices. We expand on previous environmental activism scholarship by focusing on a chronic, widespread environmental hazard affecting more communities not traditionally emphasized in such scholarship: phosphorus pollution and subsequent blue-green algae blooms. This is a socioenvironmental problem of increasing significance worldwide due to both its prevalence and the challenge of dealing with the numerous sources of such pollution. This article offers insight into the social networks of activists who work alongside government agencies on this issue in the Red Cedar Basin of Wisconsin, and how these networks may lead to civic engagement through mechanisms of social capital. Social network analysis is used here, coupled with binary logit regression, and an exploration of different types of social capital and the likelihood of civic engagement. We find that variation in leadership trait values is dependent on cultivation of different types of social capital. The type of social capital also relates to environmental activism and organization of or attendance at farm field days. In addition, government agents are particularly central to these social networks and thus are perhaps in the best position to help mobilize environmental civil society. However, findings here show that effectiveness of network expansion is inhibited by neoliberalizing forces and subsequent community capacity constraints.