Ambar: precaución, despacio, y 3) Verde: paso libre.

In this section I focus on the idea of nature as a site of hegemony (and

concurrently, counter-hegemony); that is to say a site, as well as a socially constructed phenomenon, which is integral to the assertion, and contestation of, dominant power. At this point in the chapter it is necessary to synthesise the broad conceptual themes which I have covered thus far - social movements and conceptualisations of nature – and I here do this through a theoretical lens drawing upon Gramscian and neo-Gramscian scholarship. In the context of this thesis the concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony are

significant as they pertain both to social movement activity as well as the politics of nature. Regarding social movements, notions of hegemony and counter-hegemony are important as these movements are most frequently mobilising against hegemonic actors, institutions or ideologies, in order to change their lived worlds for the better. As regards ideas around nature, the concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony remain salient in the sense that, as previously highlighted in this chapter, conceptualisations of nature and the power dynamics that emerge around them (both in its biophysical and cultural senses) are fundamentally bound within relations of dominance, control, and exploitation. In this sense, the material and subsequent analysis put forward in this thesis are deeply

concerned with notions of hegemony and counter-hegemony. Principally, the conceptual arguments made rest upon questions of how counter-hegemony operates and manifests, in often variegated forms, within the rights of nature movement.

First, then, it is necessary to provide a brief discussion of what exactly is meant when one invokes the term “hegemony”. At its core, hegemony is a concept of the power of ideas. Like Marx, Gramsci was acutely aware that the dominant ideas of a given age were those of the ruling class, however while Marx was satisfied with acknowledging this to be the inevitable result of processes emerging from the economic base, Gramsci was more interested in the nuances and complexities of the problem itself. How is such power

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exercised? Which institutions and individuals are complicit in its maintenance? How can it be challenged in a meaningful way? Consequently “hegemony” is directly concerned with notions of ideology, as well as the symbolic and material power that emerges from the operationalisation and contextual formations of ideology which come to shape the world around us. For Gramsci, hegemony manifests through ideology via what he termed “conceptions of the world” and “common sense”; when a particular perspective is

regarded as common sense (or is deemed to be axiomatic) within the social status-quo, then ideological hegemony is established, and is maintained through the consent of civil society. For example, as is evident from the previous section on neoliberal nature, the neoliberal “common sense” or hegemonic ideology of what nature is, remains predicated on things such as anthropocentrism, in the sense that humans are deemed to be the most important part of the wider web of life; and economic rationalities, in the sense that nature is regarded as something with an inherent monetary value which supersedes all other forms of value. This is then maintained through the consent of civil society who grow accustomed to the material benefits that come as a result of hyper-production and hyper- consumption (Brand and Wissen, 2013). However, once this consent is disrupted (as is the modus operandi of social movements, for example), counter-hegemony and counter- hegemonic political claims emerge. In this sense, I agree with and utilise Stuart Hall’s interpretation of hegemony. Hall (1988) asks “how already positioned subjects can be effectively detached from their points of application and effectively repositioned by a new set of discourses. This is precisely a historically specific level of application of the

interpellative [sic] aspects of ideology […]” (Hall, 1988, pp. 50). He then states that “the problem before us is […] the question of how subjects could be induced to begin to enunciate their relation to the world quite different meaning or representational systems” (Hall, 1988).

In the context of social movements, Gramscian scholarship and the concepts of ideology and (counter-)hegemony have proved popular theoretical lenses to interrogate questions of power and resistance across a wide variety of geographical regions. While a full list is far too extensive to include here, see for example: Lipschutz (2000), Nicholls (2007), Munck (2007), and Carrol & Rattner (1994) for broad theoretical discussions of social movements and counter-hegemony. However, fundamentally social movements attempt to disrupt hegemonic social structures through contentious politics and by attempting to establish new forms of meaning (and subsequently “common sense”)

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around political issues such as rights, the environment, and gender equality (Lipschutz, 2006; Korten et al. 2002). This is achieved by engaging in and also producing a form of civil society which is receptive to such issues, and by forming alliances such as those touched upon in the earlier sections of this chapter. However, hegemony, and therefore counter-hegemony, operate at different scales. For example, in many cases social movements attempt to disrupt the hegemony of the state, by seeking to challenge and critique its legitimacy through their new forms of meaning and their political positions within civil society. This has been evident in Latin America across many countries, but especially those which contained politically strong indigenous movements such as Ecuador, or those with well-organised agrarian movements such as Brazil (Vanden, 2007). In other cases, social movements have targeted international institutions that represent key figures in the neoliberal global political economy such as the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund (Stephen, 2011). However, it is

important to note that these struggles are often not mutually exclusive, and that hegemony is inherently multi- and inter- scalar (Brand, 2012; Karriem, 2009).

Furthermore, the civil society within which social movements operate has become increasingly global (McIlwaine, 2007; Munck, 2007), and this is especially visible in the context of the environment and nature (McIlwaine, 2007). However, as has already been eluded to in earlier sections, this global civil society is fraught with divergent cultural politics and systems of value (particularly around the environment). This can often have negative repercussions for grassroots movements who feel misrepresented by

organisations working within a global civil society that is often ideologically dominated by the global north (Batliwala, 2002). In this sense it is exceptionally important to pay attention to how these divergencies affect the functionality and power relations of hegemony and counter-hegemony, especially in the context of something which is as contested as the concept of “nature”.

Gramscian scholarship on the concept of “nature” and its interactions with hegemony is generally concerned with the ways in which hegemony and counter- hegemony form around nature-society relations, particularly in the context of global capitalism, neoliberalism, and the institutional forces which maintain the political economic status-quo. Indeed, as Brand and Wissen (2013, pp. 695) state, the particular nature-society relations which contextualise a society emerge both from international institutions (such as global economic organisations) as well national ones (such as the

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state). This enables hegemony around nature-society relations to primarily operate around policy formations both at the national and international level, and the global economic networks which operate within such policies. However, it is important to note that national states, particularly in the global south, are often subjected to unequal power relations in the wider global political economy and are therefore subjected to

administering policies “from above” which directly shape those countries’ nature-society relations (Brand and Wissen, 2013). In this sense, the cultural dynamics of hegemony around nature-society relations are tightly bound within the ideologies of those cultures that assert dominance over the political economic status-quo at the international level, and consequently remain akin to ideological imperialism (Brand, 2012).

So, then, it is upon this ground that social movements enter the fray over contested ideologies of nature, and the power relations that emerge as a result of them. Gramscian scholarship on social movements and nature has analysed and interrogated the

contentious politics which emerge around mobilisations and knowledge claims predicated on the protection of the environment, across a variety of geographical scales. This has often taken the shape of resistance to “green neoliberalism” (Goldman, 2007), particularly in the context of international struggles over the environment.

For example, social movements have regularly targeted international institutions which have maintained a central role in the administration of sustainable development, such as the United Nations. Where social movements have seen the hitherto hegemonic discourse of “sustainability” as deficient, they mobilised within civil society to establish counter-organisations such as the World Social Forum, where alternative ideas of sustainability, globalisation, and development were produced and shared (Goodman and Salleh, 2013). This forum brought together subaltern groups and ideologies which were regarded as counter-hegemonic, including peasant groups, indigenous groups, and civil society organisations both from the global north and global south, in order to establish a new common sense within civil society around key political issues. Crucially, in the context of this thesis, the rights of nature were also discussed here in 2012, drawing on the Ecuadorian and Bolivian experiences of these rights, and how they might be utilised to disrupt hegemonic common sense around sustainability and development (Goodman and Salleh, 2013). In other cases, Gramscian scholars have noted how water policies predicated on privatisation have become hegemonic, and how social movement actors have again mobilised counter-hegemonic claims and political action at the international

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meetings of key organisations through the occupying of public spaces and engaging in protests (Goldman, 2007). In this sense, social movements operating along

environmental principles directly engage international institutions in order to contest hegemonic discourses and policy formations that seek to dictate nature-society relations both in national and international contexts, evocating the multi-scalar processes of counter-hegemony in the context of nature.

Furthermore, Gramscian scholars have also interrogated the dynamics between nature-society relations and hegemony in the context of social movements, the state, and corporations operating at national or local scales. For example, as Prudham (2008) illustrates through a case study of British Columbia’s forest sector, social movements were constantly operating within a shifting counter-hegemonic political ecology as the bilateral relationship between the state and private capital was always evolving and changing. Furthermore, the restructuring that was occurring in the context of policy around British Columbia’s forests was frequently aligning with the interests of global private capital and against the interests of local communities. For this reason, NGOs and activist groups mobilised their own knowledges of the forests in the context of sustainable logging and artisan forestry, in order to pressure local and governmental institutions, thereby attempting to operationalise a new common sense around what these forests signified (Prudham, 2008). In this sense, subaltern meanings are promoted in order to mobilise a counter-hegemonic struggle against local and national state institutions as well as the private capital interests with which they engage.

For the purpose of this thesis this all remains salient as the rights of nature

movement positions itself as a counter-hegemonic force both within Ecuador and beyond. In the context of Ecuador, I illustrate this through an analysis and discussion of the

functionality of this counter-hegemony within different geographical spaces and across geographical scale. However, I also discuss the ways in which divergent cultural politics within the movement make these forms of counter-hegemony also become divergent themselves. As I demonstrate, the case of the rights of nature in Ecuador, as well as the multi-scalar forms of resistance and counter-hegemony within which they are engaged, prove fruitful for better understanding how hegemony and counter-hegemony operate across geographical scale, but also how the contentious politics around “nature” subsequently inform and affect these politics of resistance. Thus far, research on the rights of nature has remained blind to these dynamics, and in this sense this thesis directly

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contributes to not only conceptual discussions on the concept of nature-society relations and hegemony, but also offers an important critique of the power dynamics that operate within, and emerge from, the rights of nature movement itself, through their attempts to operationalise new forms of common sense in a counter-hegemonic context.