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Cognitive praxis is ―the creative role of consciousness and cognition in all human action, individual and collective‖ (Eyerman and Jamison 1991:3). It is a means by which theory and practice inform each other (Hassanien and Koppenburg 1995). Jamison (2001) posits that all social movements engage in cognitive praxis and he uses this concept to help explain them, and the environmental movement in particular. He states that social movements produce new knowledge and new organizational forms and principles (Jamison 2001). Hassanein and Kloppenburg (1995) describe social movements as creative engines that promote shifts in consciousness. The making and content of this new consciousness is described as cognitive praxis. Social movements are producers of innovative knowledge claims and they take action based upon these new knowledge claims.

According to Eyerman and Jamison‘s (1991) analysis of the environmental movement in Scandinavia, there are three dimensions of cognitive praxis: technological, cosmological, and organizational. The technological dimension is broadly interpreted to include criticisms of current mainstream technological and scientific development, as well as the kinds of alternative technologies that the environmental movement has

advocated. It includes technical features but focuses even more on practical activity based on lived experience (Eyerman and Jamison 1991). In a complementary manner, Conway (2004) points to the practical and tacit forms of knowledge that are evident in social movements. Specifically, she looks at the interaction of knowledge production, social location, and identity in the study of a social justice network in Toronto. Conway concludes that ―movement-based knowledge is largely tacit, practical and

unsystematized. It is partial and situated, grounded in activist practice, arising from concrete engagement in social struggle, and embedded in specific times and places‖

(2004: 8). A multifaceted praxis fosters new practices as well as emerging theories of knowledge production (Conway 2004). Further, Conway argues that social movements, as sites of learning, include aspects of learning that are pre-cognitive, or tacit. This tacit, or practical, activity is an expression of the movement‘s cosmological dimension

(Hassanein and Kloppenburg 1995).

The cosmological dimension is defined as the ―common worldview assumptions that give a social movement its utopian mission‖ (Eyerman and Jamison 1991: 68). These worldview assumptions are also central to the movement‘s identity and provide the principle or foundation on which the movement‘s future developments are based, whether technological or organizational. The organizational dimension describes the vehicles by which the movement‘s meaning is disseminated. ―All movements have a particular organizational paradigm, which means that they have both ideals and modes of organizing the production and, even more importantly perhaps, the dissemination of knowledge‖ (Eyerman and Jamison 1991: 69). ―These spaces are the critical, local places where ideas combine with experience and a movement‘s cognitive praxis actually

unfolds‖ (Hassanein and Kloppenburg 1995: 4).

Lofland (1996) claims that social movements are ―insurgent realities‖ that challenge the status quo: how people are organized and how people live. Members of social movements critique the dominant views, create and express visions of alternatives, and then model these alternatives. Socially sanctioned ways of living and doing are therefore continually produced and reproduced. Jamison (2001) argues that the emerging ecological culture represents a synthesis of the dominant culture and the residual

culture(s). Cultures, and specifically eco-minded cultures, are continually being formed and re-formed. It is a process of recombination where contradictory positions are resolved and synthesized; cultures must continuously compromise and integrate new ideas.

Social movements are processes and cannot be separated into constituent parts (Hassanein and Kloppenburg 1995). They are also transitory: the more successful a movement is, the less likely it will be a permanent organization (Jamison 2001). As the movement‘s ideals and ideas become adopted by a large majority of the intended population, they become a norm, or framework, and the movement is no longer needed.

―We conceive of social movements as forms of cognitive praxis which are shaped by both external and internal political processes….social movements are the result of an interactional process which occurs within the boundaries of a particular society‖

(Eyerman and Jamison 1991: 4).

Social movements including the environmental movement have regularly served as a source of reconstituted knowledge (Jamison 2001). New knowledge moves from movement to movement and new ideas once thought of as radical become commonplace and accepted on a wide scale. However, as movements become institutionalized, they may become fragmented and lose some of their focus (Jamison 2001). It becomes difficult to retain autonomy and coherence in relation to both the dominant culture and the more residual cultural formations (Jamison 2001). According to Jamison (2001), the environmental knowledge and praxis that was emergent in the 1960s and 1970s has been institutionalized and split into different streams.¹³ Different cultural traditions have influenced the ongoing transformations in politics related to the environment (Jamison 2001). Rather than remain a single voice, the environmental movement has divided into professionalized ‗mainstream‘ organizations and voluntary local groups coalescing around specific issues.

Michael Bell (2004) believes one goal of the environmental movement is living environmentally without special effort, where eco-friendly habits are routine. Similarly, Haluza-DeLay (2008) argues that living environmentally entails an ecological habitus that is put into practice and routinized to the point where it becomes habitual and unreflexive. However, Bell also argues that there is an acute distinction between what people claim to believe and value, and how they act; this is otherwise described as an attitude/behavior split (Kraus 1995). Bell believes that the reason we find ourselves in this predicament is due to prevailing social structures. ―We do not have complete choice in what we do. Our lives are socially organized, with all the constraints that this implies‖

(Bell 2004: 225). The ways in which our society is organized complicates and hinders our pursuit of attitude/behavior congruency. More positively, however, Bell states that it is also social organization that can be a positive influence on this split.

13 Jamison distinguishes between four types of green knowledge-making resulting from this split. These are community environmentalism, professional environmentalism, militant environmentalism, and personal environmentalism. Each involves a different approach to knowledge and how knowledge is produced and disseminated (Jamison 2001).

Social organization, however, also presents us with opportunities. When we as a community consider our collective attitudes and our collective behaviors – when we consider the ideal and the material implications of the current arrangement of our social and ecological lives – we have an opportunity to reconsider them as well. The social organization of our communities may be a large part of our problems, but the social reorganization of our communities can be a large part of the solution. We can create new social structures, new constraining influences that shape and guide our lives (Bell 2004: 225).

This said, however, successful change in our local communities (and larger communities as well) will not work unless we also have a personal commitment to change.

It‘s important to recognize the interaction, the dialogue, between reorganizing community and reorganizing ourselves. We are more likely to regard the environment in environmentally appropriate ways when our community life is organized to encourage such regard. But we can‘t simply wait around for that community reorganization to happen. We need to make it happen. Individuals are the agents of community change as much as communities are the agents of individual change (Bell 2004: 248).