Bosworth, Kai2018-09-212018-09-212018-06https://hdl.handle.net/11299/200225University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation.June 2018. Major: Geography. Advisor: Arun Saldanha. 1 computer file (PDF); viii, 273 pages.Contestation of the Keystone XL and the Dakota Access pipelines gathered in resistance a coalition of progressives, farmers and ranchers, environmentalists, and Native Nations. While these groups appear united in opposition to the pipeline, the principles and strategies of the grassroots at stake in this emergent environmental movement have been more heavily contested than recognized by existing literatures. While long-standing rifts certainly still exist between mainstream liberal environmental organizations and radical movements for environmental justice, I argue that the ideological field of contemporary environmentalism cannot be understood without taking into account the emergence of environmental populism. Populism is the ideology and political formation that takes “the people” as the principle and proper political actor. A mass movement of the people is positioned in opposition to corporations, corrupt institutions, and elites, all of whom trample upon their rights to participate and decide environmental futures. How does pipeline populism, as a collective social phenomenon, emerge from and transform contemporary ideologies of environmental politics? What consequences does it have for the political nexus of global climate chaos, racial capitalism, and ongoing settler colonialism? If we are right to think that only through people’s movements can we adequately and democratically address global climate change, scholars and activists alike must understand the underlying tensions in the desires and ideologies of what is meant to be “the people’s climate movement.” The People versus the Pipelines: Energy Infrastructure and Grassroots Ideology in North American Environmentalism addresses these questions by examining the internal tensions within populist ideologies in the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Iowa. Intervening in interdisciplinary environmental scholarship and political theories concerning the relationships among ideology and desire in populist politics, this project develops a conceptual and methodological framework that understands environmental populism as emerging from resentment towards dispossession, democratic public participation, and expert knowledges. Through interviews, participant observation, and cultural and media analysis, I demonstrate how environmentalist practices are shifting from appeals to state institutions toward a movement of the people. I argue that while environmental populism attempts to take leave of elitism, its aspirations to ground property, democracy, and expertise emerge from liberal affective infrastructures and congeal into a political activism that can reproduce Euro-American, settler colonial, and nationalist tropes. This research intervenes in interdisciplinary debates in environmental studies, political ecology, and political theory by questioning the role of environmentalism in sustaining a politics of exclusion through a left-populist ideology. I take up the complex problem of race and legacies of colonialism in movements against fossil fuels to demonstrate the sustained manner in which confronting structures of oppression elides liberal social justice movements. In making this argument, I show that the persistence of race and settler colonialism is not merely an effect of culture, history, or the state, but is also embedded in the liberal structures of contestation frequently upheld by political ecologists, including public participation, landed private property, and local and regional grassroots political formations. This research has implications for scholars and activists interested in contemporary environmental and climate justice, for political theories and public discourse on populism, and for those concerned with the intersection of race and settler colonialism in environmental politics.enenvironmentalismoil pipelinespopulismThesis or Dissertation