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 a variety of environmental and climate advocacy groups. TOCs are an increasingly important organizational device whose recent proliferation among environmental and other mission-oriented groups merits further investigation. Through interviews, participant observation, and comparative analysis of different TOC practices, this project explores how self-styled practitioners of social change think through fundamental questions about the nature of power, political economy, and social change, and how they come to interpret where to stand in relation to established patterns of social order. TOCs can provide revealing glimpses into the social construction of political “common sense” among the environmental movement: vivid portraits of how environmentalists of varying stripes are grappling with the political meaning of the present moment and what can, and should, be done about it.