3 - Imagining the future under capitalism: young people involved in environmental activism in an economic crisis

Summary

Introduction

This chapter explores how young people living in England, involved in environmental activism, conceptualise and practice transformative change in addressing the current global ecological crisis (Hufnagel et al, 2020). The aim of this chapter is to highlight that within youth-led environmental activist spaces there appears to be an emergent culture of anti-capitalism and a desire for radical system change. Despite the nuanced political and socio-economic positions that young people arrive at their activism from, there are also common threads that tie their social imaginaries together for a future founded on social justice and collective values. How young people engaged in such modalities are developing communities steeped in hope for a better future warrants not only the eyes and ears of researchers and youth practitioners, but also necessitates the adoption or creation of platforms from which to have their voices heard. This chapter contributes, with joy, to that goal.

The goals of this chapter fit into a wider understanding that is weaved throughout this book which sees practices of hope as embedded in radical community development. Imagining alternatives to the status quo necessitates hope and this chapter is part of a wider discussion this book presents around the rethinking of community development that rejects the neoliberal mantra that there is no alternative.

Global concentrations of wealth have resulted in increasing levels of economic inequality. Oxfam (2021) now estimates that the richest 1 per cent own twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people in a world population of 7.9 billion people. Looking to the national context, the UK is now one of the most unequal countries in Europe (McCann, 2020) with further income and wealth inequality on the horizon, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic (Blundell et al, 2020). Although trends towards increasingly unequal societies were already underway before the Global Financial Crash (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010), post-2008 such inequalities have accelerated (Bessant et al, 2017). Scholarship pertaining to economic inequality is growing and points to such inequality being a threat to liberal democracy (Piketty and Goldhammer, 2020). This has in particular served to further marginalise young people economically (Hart and Henn, 2017).

The lived experience of young people during this period offers a context for their responses to both the ecological and economic crises.