Environmental conflict has been at the forefront of recent political and social struggles. Many of these struggles have been acclaimed as a `new politics', being created and carried by oppositional new social movements. This `new politics' is usually dated from the 1960s and is considered to include: the women's, gay and lesbian rights, peace and anti-nuclear, ecology, youth, and racial and human rights movements.

For many theorists and activists, these new struggles represented a breakout from a virtual `freezing' of political alignments revealed in a high degree of stability in Western party systems from the 1920s to the 1960s. The advent of recent environmental conflict and more generally the `new politics' and the new social movements has been associated with widespread disillusionment with traditionally understood radical politics and subjectivities, especially working class politics. This has lead to a persuasive embracing of the potential for an opening up of a politics claimed to flow from the emergence of a plurality of new forms of social conflict centred on increasing non-class divisions and non-class subject positions.

This chapter and the next, outlines a framework in which to analyse environmental conflict and address empirically the liberatory and repressive hypotheses raised in Chapter One (see section on Statement of the thesis) through a detailed case study of East Gippsland in Part 111. As mentioned in the previous Chapter the question needs to be asked: what social existence or class position has determined the political consciousness underlying these new political issues, especially modern environmentalism? More specifically in the subject matter of this dissertation: does environmental conflict constitute a `new class politics'?

The chapter is organised into three sections: each reviews theoretical and empirical work attempting to deal with the rise of modern environmental conflict and its attendant politics and in general the `new politics' and the new social movements. The first section looks at some of the major theories so far advanced concerning the `new politics'. These I distinquish by their relative biases in terms of agency-subjective explanation (which places all emphasis on human agency in determining the social world) or structural-objective explanation (where human action results from determining structures, for example family, legal and economic systems and class). In Chapter One I outlined the reasons for rejecting these hard forms of deterministic and reductionist arguments (see discussion of theoretical and empirical orientation). At the end of this chapter I look at Eder's attempt to resolve this dualism, and introduce Foucault's rejection of the agency/structure opposition. Second, various theoretical approaches to social movements are reviewed. Critical political processes involved in the translation of social movement issues and demands into mainstream political agendas are considered, along with comments as to whether new social movements represent a challenge to organised and conventional systems of political strategy or are another sector in a competitive array of political forces. And last, I review different perspectives on the class nature of the `new politics' and the new social movements. Should they be regarded as significant non-class oppositional movements? Do they represent the politics of a fraction of the new middle class? Or, are they reformulating the content of class politics?

The concept `new politics' refers to "...the rise and cluster of new political issues and related changes in participatory dispositions and behaviour" (Muller-Rommel 1990:217). The `new politics' has been regarded as a new paradigm of social and political demands that run counter to and challenge the dominant political paradigm of the post-war period (Finger and Sciarini 1991:98, Offe 1985). Contemparory environmental conflict and politics and more generally the `new politics' and the new social movements have been associated with substantial changes in the political economies and social structures of advanced capitalist societies.

While the actual nature of these changes is contested, a number of elements emerge from the literature as common distinguishing features of the maturing of late capitalism. These include: (1) a shift from industrial production to formations based on service and information production; (2) knowledge and the means to process information have become key economic and political forces; (3) the relative decline of the industrial working class as a central player in social and political conflict; (4) political conflicts that no longer manifest themselves along traditional class lines and within traditional political forms; and (5) a replacement of the industrial working class and class struggle with new social movements as the prime movers in contemporary social and political struggles (Hirsch 1988, Hirst and Zeitlin 1991, Lash and Urry 1987, Luke 1989, Offe 1985).

It has been argued that when compared to the early phase of industrial capitalist society, the maturing of late capitalism features a `new politics' indicative of a decisive separation between "...economic determination, political action and social conflict" (Hirsch 1988:49). Further, it is suggested that the `new politics' represents new conflicts that transcend distributive class struggles which are now based around collective challenges to society as a whole (Joppke 1991:128). However, what is new about these issues and movements? Do they represent a new political paradigm? In what follows, theoretical explanations advanced by some major theorists are reviewed.

The `new politics' and their new social movements, it has been suggested, are united by a common critique of growth and the negative externalities of industrialisation (Habermas 1981, 0ffe 1985). It is further argued that the `new politics' represents or forms a `new political paradigm' which is in contest with the imperatives of an existing/dominant political paradigm (called the `old politics paradigm') (Offe 1985). The `old politics' paradigm was formed in the period immediately after World War Two around the acceptance of economic growth, distribution and security. It was underlined by increased state intervention, the expansion of the welfare state, highly institutionalised and bureaucratic pressure groups and hierarchical mass political parties (Offe 1985:821). In contrast, new social movements represent a `new political' paradigm which is commonly understood to have emerged since the 1960s, where the dominant issues:

According to Offe, the issue movements making up the `new politics' are linked by certain common values such as, autonomy and identity, which are reflected in the way these movements favour decentralisation, self-government and self-help and in the opposition to manipulation, control, dependance, bureaucratisation and regulation (Offe 1985:829). Some argue that the emergence of the `new politics' is a result of changes in the structure of late capitalism and related changes in the class structure. Both Habermas and Offe suggest that these changes have produced a widening and penetration of bureaucratic capitalist social relations which engulf and affect wider categories of people and in turn generate new conflicts and new demands.

Habermas has argued the `new politics' (with the exception of the feminist movement), represents a defensive resistance to processes of development, modernisation, and the increasing trends towards rationalisation in advanced societies. This constitutes what Habermas calls the `system' (Habermas 1981:34-35). Recent social movement conflicts occur "...at the seam between the system and life-world" (Habermas 1981:36). He argues that these new conflicts occur outside the economic sphere and outside the control of existing political parties and movements implicated in the productivist consensus or the `old politics' paradigm (Habermas 1981:36). It is argued that these new conflicts and movements concern the defence of the lifeworld from the system, where the `lifeworld' is understood to be the realm of communicative rationality governing interactions between human subjects (Eckersley 1990:745). For Habermas, the issues of the `new politics' are "... not sparked by problems of distribution, but concern the grammar of forms of life" (Habermas 1981:33).

Like Habermas, Offe sees the `new politics' as a resistance to the negative effects of bureaucratisation, which are regarded as cross-class or highly class-unspecific (Offe 1985:833). According to Offe, these new political issues develop structurally outside the realm of industrial manual production. They tend to involve people in modern management functions, especially personal and cultural services and also people structurally located outside of the labour market, who are critically affected by the side-effects of advanced capitalism. Consequently, new social movement issues are regarded as the "...intrinsic and continuously reproduced outcome(s) of the established modes of rationality of production and domination" within late capitalism (Offe 1985:838).

Both Habermas and Offe suggest that the `new politics' is structurally caused by change in the socio-economic mode of production and resultant changes in the means of social control and in class formations. These are structural/objective determinist forms of explanation. Both approaches suggest that the working class movement remains opposed to the `new politics' because it has been implicated in the imperatives of the `system' (Habermas) or incorporated into the `old politics' paradigm (Offe). These latter claims concerning the conservative and reactionary position of working class movements are rejected in critiques offered by Tucker (1991:83) and Bagguley (1992:33).

In an equally structural or structural/institutional explanation of the `new politics' Giddens (1985), does not exclude working class movements. While not directly addressing the question of what is new about the `new politics', Giddens' analysis is based on the institutional terrains of recent new issues and their movements. His analysis forms part of his critique of historical materialism, in which he rejects the view that modern social formations should be thought of as `capitalist', prefering instead the concept of `modernity' which he regards as based on institutional terrains (Giddens 1985:310-25).

Giddens' approach to the structural/institutional basis of modernity has been summarised to include four basic institutional terrains: allocative structures of class relations; authoritative structures of administration and surveillance; sanctions involving militarism and violence; and the transformation of nature associated with industrialism (Bagguley 1992:41). From these institutional terrains arise the major social conflicts and movements of modernity. Giddens regards these as: the labour movement's struggle over the ownership and organisation of production; the peace and anti-nuclear movements which fight state monopolies over the means of violence, and the institutionalisation and industrialisation of warfare; the environment movement which contests the negative externalities of industrialism and the threatened `natural' environment; and the civil rights movements which act against anti-democratic actions and potentials of state administrative powers (Bromley 1991:143).

The value of Giddens' approach, despite his neglect of the structure and systems of patriarchy which gives rise to the feminist movement, lies in his suggestion that issues and movements relate to, and have, a structural/institutional basis. In an extension of this line of structural analysis it is suggested that "All social movements have a `structural focus'. That is, they are rooted in and seek to transform relatively enduring sets of social relations" (Bagguley 1992:42).

The structural-objective explanations considered so far need to be compared to more agency-subjective explanations of the `new politics' based on changes in subjective value orientations and in socialisation among Western publics. Here major theoretical explanations developed by both Melucci and Ingelhart are examined. Neither approach pays much attention to the structural conditions and relations of production in which groups find themselves.

Melucci (1985, 1988, 1989) shares Habermas' and Offe's view that the `new politics' and the new social movements represent a "...collective resistance to the global expansion of modern industrial ways of life" (Melucci 1989a:19). However, for Melucci they are involved in a struggle over `identity'. He has described individuals and groups now occupying `complex societies' as the `nomads of the present' (Melucci 1989), referring to the search for new and plural identities and meanings. By `complex society' he refers to the decline of material production and its increasing displacement by the "...production of signs and social relations" (Melucci 1989:45). Contemporary conflicts, according to Melucci, have become distinct and involve a diversity of constituents and involve a different kind of action. For Melucci, what is distinctive about contemporary politics is that the new collective actors (he mentions the women's movement, the environment, peace and youth movements) all:

In Melucci's constructivist approach "...agency is treated as central by emphasising the active, cognitive construction of collective actors and collective action" (Bartholomew and Mayer 1992:143). New struggles over identity and meanings are symbolic challenges which render power visible by questioning "...who decides on codes, who establishes rules of normality, what is the space for difference" (Melucci 1985:810).

While Melucci's analysis is useful in that it places emphasis on the role of agency in constructing collective identities and meanings, he is too ready to proclaim the liberatory and emancipatory potentials in what he regards as "A new process of `post-industrial' democratisation based on the widening and consolidation of public spaces [which] would build on principles of rights, citizenship and equality" (Melucci 1989:228). First, this general increase in choice and publicly-recognised differences, is not devoid of hierarchical structures of class, gender and other structures of exploitation and subjection (Bartholomew and Mayer 1992:149). Second, the reputed new collective identities and meanings which Melucci regards as self-generated and offering challenges to dominant cultural codes are, as is the increasing empirical evidence, subject to normalisation, commercialisation, professionalisation and institutionalisation (Bartolomew and Mayer 1992, Fraser 1989, 1990, Luke 1991a, Quigley 1992). A classical case study of these processes is Foucault's (1978) treatment of the recent invention of `sexuality'.

Another major and widely accepted agency-subjective explanation of the `new politics' is that developed in Ingelhart's The Silent Revolution (1977). It is argued that a large group of individuals in advanced Western democracies have experienced, or are experiencing, a critical shift in values - from materialist to what is regarded as post-materialist values. Ingelhart argues that with economic development and long-term material affluence, basic needs reflected in materialist values (income and security) have been secured by a large section of Western publics. Further, people socialised under the new culture of post-materialism will have a propensity to hold post-materialist values (Ingelhart 1977, 1987, 1990). In fact, Inglehart claims that there has been a substantial inter-generational shift of values from materialist, to post-materialist. This argument maintains that the conditions of peace, economic security and widespread affluence provide a fundamentally different pre-adult socialisation experience for the post-1945 generation, where a preoccupation with basic material goals has been relatively unimportant, compared to the childhood experiences of this generation's parents and grandparents. This enables the new `post-materialists' to concentrate on and fight for higher level needs such as self-fulfillment, and environmental and quality of life goods - the stuff of the `new politics'.

Critics of Ingelhart's thesis point out that as economic conditions worsened in the late 1970s, value orientations swung back to a concern with material goals. This swing was found among all the age groups, socialised under both `materialist' and `post-materialist' milieux (Lowe and Rudig 1986:517). Inglehart's socialisation hypothesis neglects the fact that members of the contemporary business class, socialised in the 1950s and 1960s post-materialist milieu, "...tend strongly to support material values and oppose the goals of new social movements" (Eckersley 1989:218).

In terms of the growth in support for environmentalism, Ingelhart's thesis is in danger of reducing this support simply to a shift in values. This can lead to a view that "...effectively divorces environmental concern from ecological problems" (Lowe and Rudig 1986:518). Eckersley's view is that radical environmentalism is "...not simply the result of a value shift in Western publics but also a more deep-seated structural dynamic within Western societies..." (Eckersley 1989:219). In other words, changing structures explain new values rather than relative subjective dispositions, which is Ingelhart's view.

This section has briefly outlined some major explanations of the advent of the `new politics'. I suggest that these explanations rely on either, agency-subjective (Melucci, Ingelhart) or structural-objective (Habermas, Offe, Giddens) perspectives, which are based on different forms of hard reductionist determinacy. In highlighting the primary importance of agents in the cultural generation of issues and new meanings and thus social change, agency-subjective approaches fail to account for, or totally reject, the role of social structure. Equally, a social-structural-institutional perspective, while able to produce an analysis of the relationship between social conflicts and structured social arrangements, is finally turned on the constitutive force of structures. This approach fails to account for the `why' questions of new social movements for it fails to make the necessary link between structural factors and the question of how structural position leads to collective group strategies in political action. It does not explain the historical and political processes that lead from structure to action (Eder 1985:872-873, Kriesi 1988:361, Tarrow 1989:61). I return to these debates and a different non-reductionist approach at the end of this chapter.

The `new politics' needs to be understood within the context of an analysis of new social movements in terms of their action and political character: that is, as carriers of a `new politics', what do social movements do politically? The next section deals with this question.

This section examines claims about the political character of new social movements and this is done in three broad areas. First, three differing theoretical perspectives on social movements, focussed in particular on their political character are reviewed and compared. Second, under the heading `the politics of transition', consideration is given to how social movements go about translating perceived problems and their background knowledge, into issues and demands that can engage and traffic in the orbit of established and conventional politics. And third, an attempt is made to locate new social movements politically, and to consider whether new social movements are challenges or political forces that become, over time, part of the institutional mechanisms of governmentality.

Collective behaviour theory, resource mobilisation theory and the action theory of Touraine (1981), while not the only theoretical perspectives available on social movements, do indicate the wide gulf in views about the political character of social movements. The collective behaviour position can be regarded as the classical perspective in social movement theory. Associated with earlier work on crowds and apparently spontaneous social protests, this perspective was developed before the advent of the types of new social movements which have been associated with the `new politics'. Its modern expression is associated with Smelser's Theory of Collective Behaviour (1962) explaining collective political behaviour as spontaneous reactive responses to structural strains in the functioning of social systems. Smelser regards these responses as irrational, deviant and sometimes pathological. Smelser argued that the existence of structural strain is not sufficient for the emergence of collective action. What is required are generalised beliefs giving focus to tensions and strain and crucial leadership and organisation.

Smelser's emphasis on generalised beliefs and the role of leadership are useful. However, his claim that collective action is basically irrational seems to stem from a political position that relies on and supports formal, conventional and institutional processes, one that is hostile to anything that departs from the staus quo. He marginalises social movements to a reactive position with no allowance for "...the possiblility that collective action is ends-orientated, that it involves elements of calculation based upon practical reasoning..." (Scott 1990:45). He lumps together social movements with such actions as mass panics, crazes and mystical-religious movements. His claim that collective political action requires the simplification of positions to effect mass support and mobilisation equally applies to discursive positions and generalised beliefs, used to support and maintain dominant institutional arrangements and practices.

Resource mobilisation theory was formulated after the 1968 worldwide student uprisings during a decade which saw the rise of the new social movements. This theory, unlike collective behaviour theory, is concerned with a rational calculating individual and organisation. Resource mobilisation theorists have drawn on organisational analysis and centre their analytical focus on organisations representing social movements and what have been called social movement entrepreneurs.

Resource mobilisation theorists regard collective political action as rational. Drawing on Olson's The Logic of Collective Action (1962), it is argued that rational actors will calculate the costs and benefits of joining and participating in any collective action. A key problem with resource mobilisation (and rational choice theory in general) is that the actor is "...treated as an essentially asocial being, whose identity is given, and who is bound to others only instrumentally" (Scott 1990:122).

Resource mobilisation theorists argue that embedded social discontent only needs entrepreneural elites to "...define, create, and manipulate these grievences" (Zald and McCarty quoted in Kuechler and Dalton 1990:279) for a social movement to develop. Social movements are regarded as having a functional and continuing existence in the social order (Foss and Larkin 1986:19). The view is that social movements are "...extensions of rational and institutionalised `conventional' politics" (Pakulski 1991:13). There is almost no attention paid to the difference between institutional and non-institutional collective action. The conceptualisation of social movements is so broad that it comes close to defining social movements as analogous to mainstream lobby groups.

As with collective behaviour theory, the resource mobilisation perspective places emphasis on mobilisation by manipulation (Harrigan 1985:441). Ideological bonds are manufactured and manipulated by elites (Kuechler and Dalton 1990:279). Such an emphasis has lead to explaining the rise of social movements "...in terms of divisions within elites and the reconstitution of their bases for power" (Papadakis 1988:434). Related to the above is the view that social movements may represent vehicles to power for leaders when there are restrictions to social mobility and where access to positions of power within existing social structures is blocked (Scott 1990:119).

Resource mobilisation theory seems too concerned with the dynamics of social movements, of how social movements go about recruiting members, the marshalling of resources and the instrumentality of strategy development. It tends to "...domesticate and over-instrumentalise social movements" (Pakulski 1991:14), and offers limited analysis of the content and socio-political context of social movements (Scott 1990:129). By treating movements as an extension of institutional political action, it has tended to neglect their anti-systemic and adversary content. It is these two features which are central to a distinctively European approach to social movements, of which Touraine's action theory is a major example:

Touraine places great emphasis on the positive spontaneity and creativity of social movements. Although he regards social movements as rational action, they are not driven by the instrumental rationality posited by resource mobilisation theory. Touraine's rational action concerns the creativity of purposive or moral incentives in social movement formation (Hannigan 1985:438-439). For Touraine, social movements are distinguishable because of their anti-institutional agenda. Social movements aim their collective actions not at incorporation within existing institutional structures, rather toward challenging and changing these structures. Action theory regards social movements as distinct types of social conflict, quite unlike party politics or conventional group lobbying, they are "...spontaneous, anti-institutional, and transcend the system by questioning the very sociopolitical `rules of the game'" (Pakulski 1991:22).

The sociological concepts of `action' and `historicity' are central to Touraine's analysis of social movements. Action is defined as "...the behaviour of an actor guided by cultural orientations and set within social relations defined by an unequal connection with the social control of these orientations" (Touraine 1981:61). Touraine rejects the idea that individual and collective action is primarily determined by objective structures. He is concerned to show that actors can determine social relations and that it is by collective action that changes in social relations occur (Papadakis 1988:435). There are three elements to Touraine's concept of action: the self-consciousness of the actors forming an identity; an understanding of an adversary or opposition to which collective identity is formed; and a concrete situation in which the totality of conflicting issues and the stakes involved are understood and create the terrain for collective actions (Eyerman 1984:77, Pakulski 1991:22). All these elements must be both present and integrated for a social movement to develop. They produce what Touraine calls a `collective identity', mediating between a received social structure and of possible new forms of social conduct.

The concept of `historicity' is used to refer to "...the creative work humans perform by inventing norms, institutions and practices to govern and make predictable their social relations" (Jennett and Stewart 1989:3). Using the concepts of `action' and `historicity', Touraine defines social movements as "...the organised collective behaviour of a class actor struggling against his [sic] class adversary for the social control of historicity in a concrete community" (Touraine 1981:77). A social movement both struggles to defend civil society from the intrusion of the agendas of dominant institutions and struggles to formulate a concept of an alternative society. It does this by creating new meanings and identities and thus moves from the counter-offensive into a political force.

Touraine seems little concerned with questions of organisation and the particular political contexts in which social movements must engage if they are to secure their positions and claims. This leads us to consider just how social movements go about securing these positions and claims. This involves considering the processes of translation of perceived problems and their associated knowledge base into issues and issue movements with demands and programs to be trafficked and secured within the orbit of the established political authorities and political structures.

In considering the politics of translation `social constructionism' (a position that treats knowledge, positions and demands as socially constructed) and the `social construction of protest' are particularly useful concepts. At the core of such positions is the view that political problems are not objective phenomena (Klandermans 1992:77). For something to become a political issue "...it first must be defined as a problem amenable to human solution" (Burstein 1991:331). As Burstein notes "...even phenomena that seem self-evidently matters of public concern - for example, drunken driving, environmental pollution from pesticides, and child abuse - were not always viewed as public issues" (Burstein 1991:331).

Not all perceived social and political problems develop to become political issues. This requires the successful translation of problems and knowledge related to problems. One of the most important means of translation is the development of social movement discourses concerned to create, promote and seek solutions to problems. This is achieved by translating perceived problems into meaningful issues and mobilising collective political support. Conceptual frameworks dealing with this politics of translation have focussed on cognitive processes involved in the definition of problems and the construction of collective identity, core discourses and frames of meaning which are undertaken by social movements. This amounts to a view of social movements "...as functioning in part as signifying agents that often are deeply embroilled, along with the media, local governments, and the state, in what has been referred to aptly as the `politics of signification'" (Snow and Benford 1992:136).

The most general of the `social constructionist' approaches to social movements and the politics of translation, is based on an understanding of social movements as a cognitive practice (Eyerman and Jamison 1991). Starting from the position that social movements play a critical role in the social shaping of knowledge, Eyerman and Jamison put forward a theory and method of reading social movements. Their theory deals with the translation of a perceived problem and knowledge of a problem into a social movement discourse, being empirically concerned with the facilitating role of movement intellectuals, spokespeople and partisan experts, who filter out aspects of a rather diffuse worldview and produce discourses which can form a source of collective identity capable of mobilising supporters (Eyerman and Jamison 1991:102).

Two elements are crucial in the processes of translation. First, there has to be a political opportunity for a social movement to develop:

Second, social movement operatives need to construct and name the `Other', which the movement will oppose and interact with:

For social movements, these processes of translation are not unproblematic. Not only does the generation of core discourses and demands encounter internal movement debate and struggle, it is also productive of counter-discourses and counter-movements. The construction of the `Other', the naming of the antagonist, within the social construction of protest is extremely problematic. Part of problem definition is "...a process of image making, where the images have to do fundamentally with attributing cause, blame, and responsibility" (Stone 1989:282). This often involves a calculating and diagnostic exercise, via public discourse, in identifying the cause of a problem, in particular the source of blame or causality (Snow and Benford 1992:138). Part of all this is the attempted fixing of responsibility for problems. The construction of the `Other' is a political accomplishment, and the fixing of responsibility does not go unchallenged. The fixing of blame affects other parties by assigning responsibility and costs, as has increasingly been the case with the detection and legal and financial charges brought against polluters (Stone 1989:283).

"New social meanings - like new repertoires of contention - are products of the struggle within social movements and between them and their opponents" (Tarrow 1992:175). Such struggles make the nature of the translation of problems and positions into issue movements a highly problematic process. There is substantial evidence of internal social movement conflict over policy, programs and political strategies: the case of the split in the West German Greens is a good example. However, it is forces external to movements that present the most problematic parts in translation and they require some comment.

The generation of social movement discourses, demands and mobilised collective actions are productive of resistance. They inevitably are productive of counter-discourses and counter-movements which seek to contest the politicising initiatives of social movements in order to depoliticise them, often by countering claims as legitimate fields for public policy (Fraser 1989:172). If, as happens, movement demands secure a place within public discourse and the policy agenda, then the contest shifts from one over the politicisation or depoliticisation to a contest over the meaning and content of the demand (Fraser 1989:173). Conflict and struggle will occur over the framing of public issues, "...competition about what evidence is seen as relevant and what gets ignored" (Gamson 1992:70). Counter-discourses and counter-movements are rarely spontaneous reactions to social movements. They are usually a part of a defensive political strategy of an organised force which seeks to retain its monolopy on public policy. One important strategy of industry in order to counteract social movements, has been to seek to establish community based front-groups (Megalli and Friedman 1992). This has been a feature of recent Australian forest politics.

Another aspect of the resistance to social movements concerns the formation of alliances made up of antagonistic parties. The most obvious, and probably the most influential, of the resistance alliances formed to counter recent social movements has been between capital and labour, in particular its defensive position against environmentalism (Economou 1992, Siegmann 1985). This is significant, in that the threats posed by social movements have rendered formally antagonistic forces into somewhat temporary political alliances against social movements. Such alliances can have a powerful impact on government and have presented strategic problems for social movements, often presenting blockages in social movement alliance formation, as has been the case with developing green-worker co-operation.

In the struggle to translate their goals into public issues, social movements must at some time enter the public policy process and in doing so place themselves in competition with established forces in society. There is considerable debate about the location of social movements within the spectum of political forces.

In a widely held view, new social movements are regarded as political outsider groups in the political structure of late capitalism. They are regarded as challenges to the existing social and political order. Offe, for example, has argued that the new social movements are remaking politics, in that they politicise themes and issues that challenge the traditional dichotomy between the private and public. In his view, the new social movements operate in an intermediate category which is neither private, in that the new social movements develop issues that are not exclusive to the individual, nor public, in that these issues are not seen as the legitimate concern of offical political institutions and conventional lobby groups (Offe 1985:826).

Many commentators have pointed out significant differences between new social movements and institutionalised lobby groups. Evidence of difference is found in the organisational structures of these movements which feature participatory decision making, decentralised structures and an open hostility to hierarchical and bureaucratic procedures (Dalton, Kuechler and Burklin 1990:5, Offe 1985, Pakulski 1991:32-51). Unlike conventional lobby groups, the new social movements are seen as challenging the rules of the game, the institutional grammar of conventional political-administrative systems (Pakulski 1991:39). These new movements are said to have non-negotiable demands and positions and to use non-conventional political tactics:

By defining new social movements as `non-institutional politics' it becomes relatively easy to juxtapose these movements with corporatist politics, which resolves around formal, organised and institutional relationships between the state and groups/institutions. Some theorists have posited a causal link between the growth of corporatist structures and the rise of the new social movements since the second world war (Kitschelt 1986, Offe 1985, Scott 1990). This thesis has been empirically tested and found to be not sustainable by the evidence:

A rather different view of new social movements simply locates them within a pressure group pluralist model of politics; they are just another type of lobby group seeking to compete. This view is evident in studies of how environment movement organisations, along with other groups, have attempted to capture relevant state bureaucracies in order to have these agencies advocate on behalf of the particular group (Culhane 1981, Taplin 1989, Twight, Lyden and Tuchmann 1990).

Another view of new social movements, a plural elitist approach, regards social movements as vehicles for political elites denied access to conventional political status (Scott 1990). It explains "...the rise of social movements in terms of divisions within elites and the reconstitution of their bases for power" (Papadakis 1988:434). Social movements are seen to arise partly as a result of restrictions to social mobility, and where access to positions of power are blocked and/or restricted within social structures (Scott 1990:119). An extension of this view suggested that the elites who led social movements are the subject of ultimate absorption into mainstream politics. This absorption occurs through positive processes of inducements and co-optation into existing, and sometimes, new power structures (Etzioni-Halevy 1990).

Aside from the relative merits of different attempts to characterise the political nature of the new social movements, there is strong empirical evidence that over time, they move from the position of outsiders challenging the system, to become part of the institutionalised architecture of conventional politics. There are a number of processes involved in the political institutionalisation of new social movements. Social movement discourses and `need-demands' are subjected to take-over by experts and agencies in the orbit of the social state (Fraser 1989:171). This involves the generation of expert-based public policy discourses centred on translating oppositional discourses, into potential objects of state intervention (Fraser 1989:171). Social movements are institutionalised in part by the incorporation of their leadership. New political designs are invented in which to incorporate social movement leadership, from extensions of public participation, to formal inclusion in tripartite policy advice, as witnessed in the recent Australian Government's `ecological sustainable development' process (Economou 1993). This process of incorporation is extended when social movement leadership is co-opted into the state administrative apparatus.

When looked at over time, the organisational structure of many social movements have displayed hierarchical rather than participatory and consultative features. Notable on this point are findings concerning the elite decision-making and corporate business structure of Greenpeace International (Eyerman and Jamison (1989). Also, over time, social movements tend to experience internal processes of institutional self-transformation, moving from the initial oppositional-confrontation stage, through processes of stagnation and organisational concentration on maintaining issue attention, and finally entering into co-operative engagements with the state. As they mature, social movements increasingly look like orthodox sectional lobby groups, enjoying many of the benefits of institutionalisation.

A broader picture of these movements emerges when the question of class is added to the analysis. The question of the class location of the `new politics' and the new social movements is taken up in the next section.

In the introduction to this chapter the connection between the `new politics' and the new social movements and class theory was raised. The question posed was, does environmental conflict constitute a `new class politics'? This section reviews three perspectives on these issues which will be called the `irrelevance of class', the `new class' and the `reformulation of class struggle' perspectives.

In the `irrelevance of class' perspective, class and class structure are problematic as explanatory determinants of the `new politics' and the new social movements are considered to "...defy characterisation in class terms and arise out of non-economic conditions" (Barbalet 1989:239). This perspective is mostly associated with post-Marxist and post-structuralist theories, which among other things, have been concerned to replace class with new social movements as the prime movers in contemporary social and political struggles. The advent of the `new politics' and the new social movements was critical in the development of post-Marxist and post-structural positions, in that it was believed they provided direct evidence of a plurality of sites of oppression and resistance, based on a plurality of `subject positions', as opposed to a single source, that of class and class positions. Common to these positions is the rejection of the notion of a determining social structure.

The post-Marxism associated with the work of Laclau (1985) and Laclau and Mouffe (1985) is an important example of the `irrelevance of class' perspective. Based on a critique of the reductionism of Marxist theory, where all social contradictions are reducible to class contradictions and all ideologies are reducible to a class belonging, Laclau was concerned to overturn this conception of the simple translation between material conditions and political forces and the direct connection between class as a structural location within the relations of production and class as a political force. Such a conception equated political ideologies with class ideologies directly determined by a primary base, that of the economy. Laclau took Althusser's concept of the interpellation process (by which people are "hailed" or "summoned" by ideologies and thus are constituted as ideological subjects) and applied it to the analysis of political ideologies. Laclau made the theoretically critical distinction between class and popular interpellations and antagonisms, and this was central to his claim that not all political ideologies are able to be conceptualised in class terms (Mouzelis 1988:121). He attempted to show, with a detailed case study of fascist ideology, how non-class ideologies operated.

From this position, Laclau, in association with Mouffe, could theorise the emergence of the `new politics' and the new social movements. Laclau and Mouffe (1985) support their case for the `irrelevance' of class by pointing to the plurality of contemporary social struggles and the diversity of new sites of these conflicts, especially the emergence of a non-economic agenda of issues. Laclau suggests that "...the concept of class struggle...is neither correct nor incorrect - it is, simply insufficient as a way of accounting for contemporary social conflicts" (Laclau 1985:29). For Mouffe (1984) the common element in the `new politics' and the new social movements is that they represent antagonisms and conflictuality, removed from the constitution of the social agent by their place within the relations of production. They are, consequently, neither class anatagonisms nor class conflicts. The `new politics' and the new social movements are differentiated "...from workers' struggles, considered as class struggles" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:159).

In Laclau and Mouffe's (1985) new socialist agenda, the `new politics' and the new social movements displace class struggle as the focus of radical politics. Their post-Marxism is presented as a correction to the failure of Marxist theory to adequately account for apparently non-class oppositional movements, especially those not directly associated with the organised working class movement (McQuaire and Spaudling 1989:23).

The post-Marxism of Laclau and Mouffe, as with post-structuralist theory, regards society, especially contemporary social formations, as being constituted by an infinite play of difference. Society is regarded as a historically open system where conflicting forces or subject positions produce rival discourses which are the subject of struggle. Not only are social identities and discourses not fixed by social structure and class relationships, there is no correspondence between an economic structure and political formation. This position makes collective action, identity and discourse "...themselves conceived as autonomous from class" (Wood 1986:47) the principal historical determinants. Theoretically, the concept of "new social movements" has displaced that of class as an analytic reference (Burgmann 1993, Dow and Lafferty 1990, Frankel 1983).

Post-marxists and post-structuralists are not alone in claiming the `irrelevance' of class. More conventional Marxists such as Arato and Cohen are equally concerned with the diversity and plurality of the new social and political movements and argue that it is simply futile to theoretically or organisationally attempt to unify this plurality and diversity "...under one single system, contradiction or class confrontation" (Arato and Cohen 1983:270). And in what is basically a neo-Weberian perspective, Pakulski argues that "...social conflicts do not need to have a class basis in order to be widespread, persistent and historically important...why should the constituency of mass social movements have a class base?" (Pakulski 1991:179). While Pakulski, among others, wants to argue that this `new politics' does have a distinct socio-structural basis, he suggests that this has "...little to do with market position and property and/or occupational status and much more to do with a combination of generation, social situation and mobility" (Pakulski 1991:180).

The `irrelevance of class' perspective is also present in many sociological approaches to the `new politics' simply as a result of the widespread view that the old class conflicts of the industrial working class have been substantially settled and have been historically transcended by newer conflicts, that involve a diverse constituency beyond the working class which relate to issues removed from the struggles over distribution and citizenship.

In the `new class' perspective, quite unlike the above perspective, class and class theory is used to explain the `new politics' and new social movements where explanations are based on substantial change in advanced capitalism and in the related change in class structures. This perspective argues that the structure and requirements of advanced industrial societies have created a new middle class as distinct from the traditional petit bourgeois. This new middle class is made up of occupational groups which by virtue of their formal educational credentials, occupy strategic positions in management, administration, skilled technical functions and in the cultural and welfare apparatus (Baxter et al 1989, Carter 1985, Kivinen 1989, McAdam 1987, Waters 1989).

There is no agreement on the exact structural location of the new middle class, whether it represents a distinct class (Ehrenreich, B and J 1979, Gouldner 1979, McAdam 1987, Wright 1979, 1985,) or a fraction of the working class (Barbalet 1986, Edwards 1979, Waters 1989, Watson 1990:128-136). There is further disagreement on the social and political allegiance of this new middle class. It is the thesis that the new middle class is divided into clear fractions which is critical to suggestions that the `new class' constitutes the social structural base for the `new politics' (the substance of the `new class perspective'). The `new class' is regarded as a substantial fraction of the new middle class, structurally located in the non-profit sector of modern economies, non-profit in the sense that products produced do not enter the market. More specifically, the `new class' is based in the social welfare and cultural services sector and is generally reliant on and supportive of increased state intervention (Brint 1984, Cotgrove and Duff 1980, Eckersley 1989, Gouldner 1979, Kriesi 1988, McAdam 1987, Parkin 1968, Szelenyi and Martin 1988).

Distinguished from the industrial working class on the basis of its location within the labour process, where it performs predominantly mental labour processes based on formal professional qualifications, the `new class' is occupied with cultural, administrative and service concerns and values. It is argued that the `new class' contains occupational groups which differ from both managers of large scale organisations and what Gouldner (1979) calls the `technical intelligentsia', who are involved with technical and problem-solving roles within these organisations (Eckersley 1989:209). In contrast, `new class' occupational groups are found in client-oriented areas where they constitute the social and cultural specialists (Kriesi 1989:1082) or as Gouldner (1979) maintains, they represent the `humanistic intellectuals'. In a more specific conceptualisation, the `new class' is regarded as that part of the knowledge elite who occupy positions within the state apparatus, either directly or who are reliant on state funding and/or intervention, for example the community services sector (McAdam 1987).

The `new class' is widely considered to constitute an oppositional grouping. In particular it is said to oppose "...capitalism, business and the market economy" (McAdam 1987:24) and to demonstrate an antagonism to that part of the new middle class whose function is the system's organisational stability and agenda of growth. Cotgrove and Duff (1980) have argued that there is a link between opposition to the dominant ideology and occupational role and that the `new class' is an oppositional class because it represents "...those operating in those subsystems in industrial societies concerned with the pursuit of non-economic values; and functioning outside the market, and in a sense, non-capitalist elements persisting within capitalist societies (Cotgrove and Duff 1980:343). Empirical studies by Parkin (1968), Cotgrove and Duff (1980), Brint (1984) and Kriesi (1989) have all found a link between `new class' occupational groups and socio-political attitudes which can be described as oppositional and which have provided the basis for the mobilisation of new social movements.

It has been suggested that the `new class' not only supports but obtains objective material rewards from increased state intervention in an array of market and environmental regulatory measures, expanded educational, cultural and human service laws and programs, and in new state funded agencies and salaried, professionally credentialled employment positions. This thesis was advanced by Berger (1978) who suggests that the `new class', in active support for the `new politics', was representing its own strategic class position, especially its attempts to secure a power-base in the planning and welfare agencies of the modern state.

Parts of this `new class perspective' have been disputed, especially arguments that link the `new politics' and new social movements with the objective class position of the new middle class, or a fraction of this class. An alternative thesis has been proposed, based on a more limited causal connection between the new middle class and in particular the `new class' and the `new politics' and new social movements (Bagguley 1992:38). For Bagguley, the linkage is to be found in the increased growth of structures of education and knowledge that characterise the `new class'. The central position of the `new class' within the expanded means of mental production enables it to "...facilitate the emergence of new social movements through the application of their skills as producers and organisers of knowledge" (Bagguley 1992:39). It is the social resources of the `new class' that provide the basis of political mobilisation.

In reference to the environment movement, a number of important theorists have argued that it is the `new class', by virtue of its adversarial culture and structural class location, that is best enabled to understand the ecological crisis and to take a leading role in radical political action on such issues (Bagguley 1992, Eckersley 1989:221-223, Kriesi 1989:357). Theorists and activists who hold this view can easily deny other social groups, especially the industrial working class, their views of the world and, in the case of environmental problems, disempower solutions developed by others. This can lead to `new class' support for, and incorporation into, new administrative procedures in which members of the `new class' can use their intellectual training in the policing of the environment.

The `reformulated class politics' perspective is a specific argument concerned with the connection between the advent of environmentalism, environmental politics and the reputed reformulation of the basis of contemporary class politics. This perspective is based on the view that while we still have class societies, the nature of the conflicts have radically changed into conflicts about cultural identity and meaning in the face of the logic of the new productive requirements and negative externalities of late capitalism.

Further, this perspective concerns the recent political significance of environmentalism and those sections of the emerging class structure of late capitalism that for various reasons take up the qualitatively different class struggles based on the `nature' versus society conflict (Beck 1992, Eckersley 1989, Eder 1990, Olofsson 1988).

In reference to the recent ecological politicisation, Eckersley (1989) argues that the scale and extent of the environmental crisis has reconstituted politics. She further argues that the content of class struggle and class conflict is now based around the `nature' versus society conflict, a conflict in which the `new class' is given the status which the traditional industrial working class formerly held as the critical social force of social understanding and social change:

Another view suggests that the content of class conflict and class struggle has been altered or has been reformulated in the transition from `industrial society' to `risk society' (Beck 1992). Beck argues that "...wealth production produced the antagonisms between capital and labour, while the systematic chemical, nuclear and genetic threats bring about polarisations between capital and capital and thus between labour and labour -cutting across the social order" (Beck 1992:111). Beck talks of the world economy as divided between risk winners and risk losers and concedes that the boundaries are difficult to define. The new ecological conflicts, according to Beck, are producing sector-specific alliances between the old class opponents, labour and capital, which are confronted by a mixed fraction of other social groupings "...over and above the divisions of class differences which have been narrowed under the pressure of `ecological politicisation'" (Beck 1992:112). Unlike the traditional class-specific conflicts based around scarcity, these new conflicts concerning `nature' are by contrast regarded as being non-partisan and certainly not limited to the positions of a particular socio-economic group or class.

The above positions emphasise the structural determination of the `new class' and the reformulation of class conflict as developed by environmental politics. The work of Eder has provided the most sustained argument concerning the link between the reformulation of class struggle based on the `nature' versus society conflict. Eder maintains that the central social conflict is now based on "...what type of development modern societies should engage in" (Eder 1990a:21). He regards this conflict as displacing the traditional conflicts between labour and capital which had dominated the political agenda since the 19th century, where conflicts arose from problemisations over labour exploitation and injustice. The new conflict over `nature' is regarded as more pervasive than those of the past and is based on the negative results of modernisation where the relationship of society to `nature' is now seen by substantial social groups as one of disrespect, manipulation, and threat.

Eder advances three basic propositions as background to his thesis that `nature' and social relationships to `nature' are at the centre of contemporary class conflict (Eder 1990a:25). These propositions are:

The problematisation and collective action over `nature' has according to Eder been conducted by people who can, on a range of criteria, be regarded as part of a new social class who are very much the descendants of the old petit-bourgeois. These collective actors are "...doubly opposed to the class structure of industrial society - opposed to its dominant classes and opposed to its dominated classes" (Eder 1990a:37). He suggests that it is on these expanding new classes that the ecological crisis has the greatest impact. This is due to the centrality that `nature' has always had in the life-world and life style of these classes, revealed in their "...leisure patterns, walking, climbing, excursions into the countryside, all forms of tourism..." (Eder 1990a:38). In what Eder describes as the emerging middle class society, `nature' itself, our relationships with `nature' and particular patterns of development based on `nature', have and will continue to occupy centre stage in class conflict and political struggles. These will form the meta-social conflict issue of the present. Thus the issue of `nature' has reformulated the basis of traditional class struggle (Eder 1990a:38-43).

But how does Eder see environmental conflict as class politics? And how should we use `class' as an analytical concept? Firstly, Eder has rightly suggested that questions of `nature' have become class questions of central importance in what is a highly conflictual politics. This leads to the view of environmental politics as a politics of collective actors who have produced themselves as a class through collective action (Eder 1993:179). Secondly, Eder wants us to explain this new class conflict and politics over `nature' neither as subjective contradictions within individual actors, nor as objective contradictions at the level of structure (the agency/structure question raised earlier in this chapter). Eder's preferred approach is:

Eder's aim of relocating agency in a `world of social conflict' still depends upon ultimate causal processes, for his `world of social conflict':

Eder suggests that retaining this assumption of `in the last instance' is necessary for scientific objectification beyond "a mere descriptive account of social processes" (Eder 1993:191). Eder makes the mistake of claiming that there is some ultimate `truth' available from science (above orders of description) and thus requires the residual prop of a reductionist shift to a prior determining force. The problem with a claim like Eder's, which appeals to foundational processes, is that it fails to question how these processes are decided upon as foundational. He appeals to a site outside power, struggle and strategy. Clearly, Foucault would agree with the important position that the `world of social conflict' produces class politics and class relations. Social conflict is a key focus for Foucault. He is constantly studying struggle and strategies. I have earlier pointed to his work as offering a rejection of the dualism of agency/structure, of which he was to say:

The opposition to agency/structure frameworks is found in the way Foucault sees the social world in terms of the dualism of the `discursive'/`non-discursive'. This, as Deleuze summarises Foucault's position, is the:

In Foucault's formulation there are constant relational dependancies between the discursive and the non-discursive. This does not allow a reduction to single causes; rather what we are looking at are multiple correlations. Foucault's position is based on his radical materialist theory of power:

In rejecting agency/structure, Foucault was also rejecting a traditional orthodox approach to social class in what he called the "thematics of representation that encumbers analyses of power" (Foucault 1988:210):

Foucault's position on power will be a central part of our next chapter.

This chapter has discussed three substantive areas: the `new politics' and the new social movements and their relationship to the question of class. Theoretical explanations for the `new politics' are divided into agency-subjective and structural-objective approaches, both based on a form of reductionist determinacy. Agency-subjective perspectives highlight the cultural generation of issues and new meanings. Structural-objective perspectives focus on the relation between social conflicts and structured social relationships and changes in the material and institutional basis of social relations.

Changed structural conditions however, do not automatically produce a `new politics' and here the actions of social movements are critical in the making of new political issues. As we have seen, social movement theory is vast and differentiated by particular frames of reference. Of the three theoretical schools reviewed in this chapter, the collective behaviour perspective is rejected because its basis is that collective action is irrational. Resource mobilisation theory, which is based on the notion of the rational actor, provides an important emphasis on the role of leadership or movement entrepreneurs in the establishment and continuence of social movements. This theory is focussed on the `how' of social movements, and unlike European social movement theory, does not deal with the `why' questions raised by the new social movements. Representative of this latter concern, Touraine's `action theory' concentrates on the content of social movements, on the socio-structural contradictions which produce the historical conditions where social movements arise, and where they seek new meanings and social changes. A more productive view is that both `how' and `why' questions need to be accounted for, and that a blend of the two provides a more rounded understanding of the new social movements.

Beyond these formal theoretical positions, I have suggested that the advent of the new social movements raise two critical questions: the politics of translation and the political/social location of the new social movements. The politics of translation notes that social and political problems are not objective ones, but need to be constructed. New social movements have to enter a competitive market where groups and institutions struggle over the political definition of problems and meanings. Here the role of movement entrepreneurs is critical in the translation of movement problems and knowledges into public discourses, which includes the critical public naming of the `Other', the antagonist to which the movement seeks to focus public blame for a problem and fix the costs as the responsibility of the antagonist. Such discourses do not go unchallenged and are productive of counter-movements and the tendency toward the incorporation of critical discourses into institutionalised and professional agendas. In attempting to locate new social movements within the architecture of contemporary politics some major claims were reviewed. The perspective advanced in this dissertation is that these movements have over time, tended to move from challenges to largely incorporated political forces.

On the question of the class nature of the `new politics' and the new social movements, three perspectives were identified. The first, the irrelevancy of class agreement, is rejected. This is not because it points out the new basis of political identity and mobilisation which have arisen outside the workplace, but because it goes on to argue that there is no link, no correlation between these new politics movements and class structure and class politics.

It is a more productive approach to see the new politics and new social movements as related to or correlated with the changing class structure in advanced capitalist society being generated and supported from a particular structural location (in the cultural and personal services sectors of modern state administrations), which has the effect through collective action of defining a new class and new class political relations. Further, it is this `new class' which has come to problematise `nature' as a new subject of a revised or reformulated class conflict. As indicated earlier, there is a `new class' basis to modern environmental politics which can be studied without a reductionist determinacy. In turn it is argued that in studying contemporary environmental conflicts, class does really matter. This position on the class nature of environmental politics will guide the case study analysis of East Gippsland and develop the theoretical approach adopted here.

This chapter provides only part of an adequate framework in which to theorise and analyse environmental conflict. It needs to be underpinned by a theoretical account of political power, discourse and discursive struggle. This is the task of the next chapter.