Self-defeating environmentalism? Models and questions from an ethnography of toxic waste protest

Drawing on an ethnographic account of toxic waste protest in post-reunifica tion Germany, the article compares three models of environmental activism ( by Douglas and Wildavsky, Melucci and Latour respectively) which problemati ze the production of knowledge. Insights from social studies of science are used to examine the entanglement of language and matter in environmentalis m. The article suggests, however, that unless scholars pay due attention to the way they frame their questions, they are at risk of finding their work irrelevant or impotent. On the other hand, it suggests that to achieve rel evance and power, empirical, particularly ethnographic accounts, which emer ge out of a meeting between activism an academia, are also required.