Theories of Change

This research project investigates clashing perspectives within the environmental movement over how to apprehend the shifting terrain — and the corresponding strategic implications — of the current conjuncture. I examine how such tensions are negotiated and managed by analyzing the “Theory of Change” (TOC) models produced by different environmental and climate advocacy groups. TOCs are an increasingly important organizational device that have proliferated among a range of mission-oriented initiatives (including but by no means limited to climate and sustainability). Through interviews, participant observation, and comparative analysis of TOC processes and practices, this project explores how self-styled practitioners of “social change” think through fundamental questions about “change” itself involving the nature of power, history, and political economy, and how they interpret where to stand and how to position themselves in relation to established patterns of social order. TOCs can provide revealing glimpses into the social construction of political “common sense” among movement spaces: vivid portraits of how activists of varying stripes are grappling with the political meaning of the present moment and what can, and should, be done about it.