The environmental activist identity is a recent invention requiring long cultural work

Evidence

It’s important to point out that the very idea of being an “environmental activist” is actually pretty new. Nobody went around identifying that way in 1870—and, for that matter, such a designation was almighty rare even in the 1950s. That doesn’t mean nobody cared about the thing we call “the environment.” Rather, it took time, and quite a lot of work, to give both those words, “environment” and “activist,” the meanings that feel natural and intuitive to us now. There is fascinating history in both those stories: The amazing dynamics by which our surroundings, both natural and civic/urban, came to be understood as complex systems needing collective care and management and protection; the awakening of forms of citizen solidarity and issue-engagement that we consider “activism.” — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 235

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels how ‘attention’ as a collective commons issue must be culturally constructed. Echoes earlier concepts of attention as justice and collective remedy from prior chapters.