Community organising and cultural power: working in tandem
Originating with the work of a student group at Pennsylvania’s Swarthmore College in 2010, the fossil fuel divestment movement was launched as a global movement late in 2012 through 350’s ‘Do the Math’ tour.
People-powered movements consistently rely on cultural power, and create it
Much of the early activity took place on university campuses, and it has extended to local councils, faith communities and initiatives aimed at financial institutions.
The campaign involved good community organising in practice: training events were held, resource kits were developed, relationships were built, local groups and campaign networks developed, and alliances were developed with important partners, which swung in behind the campaign.
However, if the movement’s work is only described in terms of “building people power”, what may not come through is a focus on:
- the spark that sets this process in motion
- the motivation to participate
- the imaginative work that creates the compelling sense that ‘something needs to be done’, and how this is projected (1) to campaigners (2) to the public;
- the vision of what a different world would look like
- the movement’s use of the politics of social license and reputation – e.g. tarnishing the public image of institutions that invest in fossil fuels
Cultural power is central to each of these factors.
The cultural work that movements do with stories and images can be sustained, or it can falter. It can consist of one-off, disconnected jolts of energy—or it can feature something much more like a coherent story, often fired with defining images and enacted in dramatic events that energise participants, which can make an enduring impression on the public.
Images from the ‘Do the Math’ tour
Cultural power is “everywhere” in the divestment movement. 350’s Do the Math tour provides an example.
‘Capturing the activist imagination’ was a first step in engaging the public imagination about divestment, and the images below illustrate important aspects of how McKibben and 350 went about this.
The tour evoked iconic images such as the Great Barrier Reef, and its message about CO2 took graphic form. The Do the Math presentations featured vivid imagery of climate impacts, and of people gathered to take action in response.
A ‘battle of images’: divestment vs the fossil fuel industry
The divestment campaign has exerted pressure on institutions with comparatively few active participants but significant cultural power aimed at an institution’s public image.
The imagery that has circulated on social media (see examples below) typically features small groups of people gathered in front of an institution – e.g. a university building or bank.
Imagery has an important place in strategic thinking within the divestment campaign:
- Fossil Free: A Campus Guide to Fossil Fuel Divestment states: ‘Think about the creative actions… that will win student body support and turn up the heat on your administration… Think about the photo you want in the paper: a great picture really is worth a thousand words…’ (pp. 21, 30).
- The Trainers Handbook: Student Divestment Workshop emphasises: ‘The visual for your event is as important as your spokespeople… Your action photo is KEY, it’s your best tool for leveraging your event in the media and the community after the fact’. The handbook urges campaigners to plan ‘the image you want people to remember’ (p. 60).
Examples of the images used by the divestment movement to pressure institutions and fire the imagination of supporters appear below. The images often combine:
- campaigners taking action
- images representing the identity of an institution such as well-known buildings or an institution’s logo
- icons such as the Great Barrier Reef
Exerting power through ‘public image’ and ‘social license’
350’s Bill McKibben describes how social license and public image are a fundamental to divestment campaigning:
‘We need to take away their social license, turn them into pariahs, and make it clear that they’re to the planet’s safety what the tobacco industry is to our individual health.’
He observes that the campaign’s focus is on ‘weaken[ing] the fossil fuel industry’s political standing’ and notes that ‘fossil fuel companies care a lot about image, after all—it’s what makes it easy for them to exert their political control. It’s why they run those back-to-back-to-back TV ads about “clean coal”’.
An email sent by 350.org to supporters highlights the place of public image in the movement’s strategic thinking:
Why divestment? Well, we know that fossil fuel companies are principally concerned about two things: their bottom line and their public image. A nationwide movement forcing our schools to divest from fossil fuels will deal a serious blow to both.
Symbolism and practical outcomes
Critics of divestment have dismissed it as symbolic, however strong evidence points to significant practical outcomes. An Oxford University study analyses how changes in the public image of fossil fuels translate into broader changes:
It found that stigmatising the fossil fuel industry
poses [a] far-reaching threat to fossil fuel companies and the vast energy value chain’. A firm’s resulting negative image can affect suppliers, subcontractors, potential employees, customers, governments, politicians and shareholders. Stigmatised firms may face restrictive legislation, and they may be ‘barred from competing for public tenders, acquiring licences or property rights for business expansion, or be weakened in negotiations with suppliers. Negative consequences of stigma also include cancellation of multibillion-dollar contracts or mergers/acquisitions (pp. 12, 13).
These statements are reflected in Shell’s 2017 Annual Report, which notes how environmental effects ‘could harm our reputation and licence to operate or expose us to litigation or sanctions’. It notes ‘rising climate change concerns’ and states, ‘An erosion of our business reputation could have a material adverse effect on our brand, our ability to secure new resources and our licence to operate’.
Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, credited the global Divest-Invest movement with being ‘a primary driver of success at the Paris Climate Talks in 2015’. Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, observes: ‘[divestment] is largely symbolic, but symbols have power. They motivate people. They inspire people. They can change behavior’.