Localism and the Environment

David J. Hess*

Citation: Hess, David J. Localism and the Environment. Sociology Compass 2008,2(2): 625-638.

This is a draft copy of the final version. Some minor changes may have occurred in the final version.

Abstract
Localism, understood here as a movement to regain sovereignty over the local
economy in an era of globalization, offers an alternative economic development
strategy to that of the high-tech, export-oriented manufacturing cluster. Instead,
localism advocates call attention to the benefits of import-replacing strategies that
strengthen locally owned businesses, farms, and nonprofit organizations, as well
as local government agencies. Primary examples of localism include the ‘buy local
movement’ supported by independent retailers and banks, community-controlled
energy, and local food and agricultural networks. Localism may generate environmental
benefits due to decreased transportation and increased awareness of the
environmental effects of production when located near consumers, but the
connection between localism and environmental dividends is variable and tenuous.
The term ‘localism’ can be used in many ways, among them policies that
devolve national-level government functions to local governments (Stoker
2004), regional industrial clusters that draw on place-based synergies with
universities and local governments (Castells and Hall 1994), localization
strategies employed by Internet firms to carve out new markets (Covert
2006), and the legal doctrine that broadcasters should serve the interests
of the communities in which they are located (Hilliard and Keith 2005).
This article focuses on another use of a term: the social movement that
aims to increase the role of locally owned, independent businesses and
other organizations that primarily serve the geographical communities in
which they are located. To some degree the strengthening of the locally
owned, independent sector of regional economies has environmental
benefits. Examples include sustainable, local agriculture; locally owned
stores and services offer toward green products; and locally owned distributed
energy involves renewable sources. However, because localism is primarily
about local ownership, and local ownership and production are not always
greener than their global alternatives, the environmental aspects of localism
appear as only one strand in a movement, and environmental concerns may
be more or less prominent depending on organizations, regions, and industries.
As a result, when assessing the localism–environment connection, it is
important to take in account the variation in localism as a starting point.

Background

The geographical scope of the meaning of the word ‘local’ varies widely

from one place to another. In contexts of international trade, the term

‘local’ may be used as the equivalent of ‘domestic’ or ‘national’, and in

some cases, ‘local’ may refer to an entity the size of an American state or

European country. The term will be used here in its more common

meaning of a metropolitan region or rural region in which the inhabitants

share common shopping, employment, and other economic relationships.
The widespread variation, even in some cases contestations, of what is
meant by the word ‘local’ should serve as a reminder that shared definitions
are products of complex histories that involve the interaction of actors and
institutions on various scales (Goodman 2004; Hinrichs 2003).
Although there is an interest in enhancing local ownership in many
countries, this essay will focus mostly on the USA, where there is an
organized movement around local, independent business associations and
local agricultural networks. Although advocates of localism refer to their
activities as a ‘movement’, localism in the USA is also a social movement
in the sociological sense because it has extensive organizational and temporal
scope, articulates a social change goal that challenges elite views about the
best ways to organize the economy, and in some cases uses extrainstitutional
repertoires of action. Localist groups can exhibit elements of an ‘industrial
opposition movement’, such as the antinuclear and antigenetically modified
foods movements, when they become involved in campaigns against
big-box (superstore) retail development, and in such cases extrainstitutional
repertoires of action, such as street protest, are visible. However, through
the support of alternative, locally made and fair trade products and labels,
localist groups also exhibit elements of ‘technology- and product-oriented
movement’, such as the pro-alternative renewable energy and organic
foods movements, where repertoires of action tend occur inside existing
institutions (Hess 2007). Examples of reformist repertoires of action include
city ordinances intended to favor local businesses and limit superstores;
‘buy local’ campaigns, which urge consumers and local organizations to
increase their purchases from locally owned, independent stores, farms,
banks, and other organizations; and the development of community-oriented
financial institutions.

The emergence of localism as a social movement is deeply implicated

in the politics of globalization. Theorists of globalization have recognized
that the local and global are mutually constitutive and that there are
various ways in which the local and global interact each other (Robertson
2005; Sassen 2000). The localist movement is concerned primarily with
reversing the negative effects of corporate consolidation of the economy,
especially the loss of economic sovereignty by place-based communities
over local economies. Because of the fundamental concern with the negative
effects of corporate control over local economies, localism can be seen as

part of, or at least parallel with, the broader antiglobalization, anticorporate
movement. A distinguishing characteristic of the localist movement is that
its social address is primarily in the small business sector, and localism
advocates tend to utilize consumption and local economic policies as the
primary avenues for social change.

The localist movement of the early 2000s in the USA has an historical
precedent in the anti-chain-store movement of the 1930s. Although the
earlier movement ended in failure, it produced significant legislative
victories that responded to widespread public concern with consolidation
of the retail sector. A sociological analysis of the legislative responses
indicated that success depended on intrastate activity and interstate diffusion
of the legislation, whereas the collapse of the movement was due largely
to industrial action in the federal courts (Ingram and Rao 2004). Industry
also enrolled labor unions and agricultural cooperatives for support, and
it framed consumption as a narrow economic activity that was based on
pricing (Ingram and Rao 2004; Mitchell 2006). The localist movement
of the early 2000s is different from its predecessor in that it has not utilized
state legislatures as a primary arena for action; rather, the legislative
emphasis has been on local ordinances that restrict the potential of big-box
stores to locate in a community (Talbot and Dolby 2003). Furthermore,
localism today also utilizes direct-to-consumer ‘buy local’ campaigns. In
addition to developing directories and media campaigns, ‘buy local’
campaigns have used local labels with some success (Brand 2005) as well
as electronic databases (Gengatharen and Standing 2004; Persky et al. 1993;
Sandro 1994).

Localism advocates are often critical of regional economic development
strategies that offer government subsidies and tax breaks in order to attract
distant manufacturers and corporate retail firms. There is concern that the
nonlocal corporations will bring pollution and congestion to the region,
and that they will close or leave when subsidies run out or profits erode.
Localism advocates favor a complementary strategy of import substitution
or import replacement. In contrast to the export orientation of the
manufacturing and the high-tech sector, import substitution emphasizes
opportunities for new, locally owned businesses that can replace goods and
services that the regional economy is importing from nonlocal sources,
especially in the retail, energy, and food sectors (Jacobs 1969, 1984; Persky
et al. 1993; Shuman 1998, 2006; Williamson et al. 2002). To bolster the
argument, localism advocates note that big-box stores rely on a perception
that prices are lower, whereas studies indicate that the prices are not
always lower, and superstores may start with predatory, low prices but
gradually raise them once the local competition is put out of business
(Mitchell 2006; Shuman 2006). Where prices are lower, the quality of
goods and associated product servicing is often lower, too. Likewise, localism
advocates point to studies of a ‘local multiplier effect’, which document
that when similar expenditures are made at a locally owned business and

a competing nonlocal branch of a large corporation, more money from

the local store recirculates within the community and more donations are

made to local nonprofit organizations (Shuman 2006).

Within the broader field of development economics, import substitution

is widely viewed as a flawed economic development strategy for less developed

countries. Very popular from the 1940s to the 1970s, import substitution

policies gradually gave way to export-oriented, free trade policies during

the 1980s and 1990s. The success of export-oriented strategies in South

Korea, Taiwan, and a few other countries during the 1960s and 1970s
legitimated the transition, and the structural adjustment policies of global
financial institutions imposed the transition on countries that remained
unconvinced (Bruton 1998). However, neoliberal trade policies and the
export-oriented economic development strategy have not been successful
in all developing countries, and in many regions, the neoliberal policies
are associated with increased inequality and informalization of the
economy (Portes and Roberts 2005). Although the international experience
is not directly applicable to metropolitan economic development strategies
in wealthy countries, a growing number of articles in the popular press
raise criticisms very similar to those leveled at import substitution policies
in less developed countries. For example, critics of localism suggest that
‘buy local’ campaigns are based on the flawed economics of protectionism
and create nontariff barriers to trade (Hess forthcoming). Localism
advocates have responded by noting that local purchasing preferences
(such as can be enacted through formal zoning ordinances and purchasing
guidelines or through informal consumer buycott campaigns) help level a
playing field that is heavily entilted against small, independent businesses
(Mitchell 2006; Shuman 2006).

Localism advocates also point out that there are many other, noneconomic
benefits of having a vibrant, locally owned, independent business sector.
One argument centers on the value of locally controlled enterprises for
civic life and democracy. In the USA, the importance of localism for
democracy was recognized for the media via the legal principle of
broadcast localism, which required that broadcast media serve their local
communities and meet guidelines regarding location, accessibility, and
programming. Changes in federal regulations, the shift away from
broadcast media, and media consolidation have weakened both the
principle and practice of media localism (Hilliard and Keith 2005;
Napoli 2001). However, there is also a growing community media movement,
and there have been limited but favorable developments in areas such as
community radio and Internet-based, local, independent news and
information (Brand 2004; Dunaway 2002; Nieckarz 2002). Increasingly,
media activists are showing concern with the problem of the concentration
of ownership, and consequently their concerns are beginning to converge
with those of the localist movement that has emerged from the small
business sector.

Although the relationship between locally controlled media and local
democracy may be intuitive, social science research also supports the less
obvious thesis that local business ownership is associated with healthier
local democracies. For example, local retail businesses are positively
correlated with public gathering places, social capital, voter turnout, and
average income, whereas they are negatively correlated with poverty,
infant mortality, and crime (Tolbert 2005; Tolbert et al. 2002). Conversely,
the construction of new Wal-Mart stores has been associated with lower
social capital, voter turnout, and nonprofit organizations at a county level
(Goetz and Rapasingha 2006; Goetz and Swaminathan 2006) as well as
with the predictably negative effects on existing local retail grocery stores
(Artz and Stone 2006).

Localism and the environment

A central debate in the environmental sociology literature concerns the
ability of the large, publicly traded corporation to address long-term issues
of environmental degradation. Sociologists influenced by Marx’s political
economy are pessimistic; they suggest that there is a deep contradiction
between the growth logic of capitalism and the ecological constraints
posed by aggregate environmental deposits and withdrawals into local and
global ecosystems (Pellow et al. 2000; Schnaiberg and Gould 1994; York
and Rosa 2004). In contrast, the more optimistic advocates of the ‘ecological
modernization’ perspective point to numerous examples of public–private
partnerships that are leading to the greening of industry and to dramatic
improvements in the environmental performance of some corporations
(Mol and Spaargaren 2000, 2005; Scheinberg 2003; see also Freudenberg
2005). The debate has some value for understanding the potential of
localist economic organizations to provide a contribution to the solution
to the contradiction between the growth logic of the large, publicly traded
corporation and the limits to growth imposed by the global ecosystem.
Whereas the large, publicly traded corporation is heavily focused on stock
market prices, short-term earnings, and overall projections of growth in
revenue and sales, the small, privately held business has more freedom to
integrate social and environmental responsibility goals into business
decision-making without having the pressure of showing continual gains
in growth and earnings. Furthermore, ownership issues aside, there is also
some evidence that companies with distant headquarters pollute more
than those with local headquarters (Grant et al. 2004; Princen 2002).

Although local ownership allows some degrees of freedom for business
enterprises to sacrifice profits for social and environmental concerns, locally
owned and independent enterprises do not necessarily develop socially
and environmentally responsible practices. Of the two leading associations
of locally owned, independent business associations in North America,
one (the American Independent Business Alliance) focuses on the message

of preserving small, independent businesses without showing much

concern for environmental issues. Locally owned, independent businesses

are not necessarily green, and they may lack the capital resource of large

corporations that are investing in green production processes. Likewise,

locally owned, independent businesses are very responsive to the values of

their customers, and consequently their environmental practices vary with

that of the region in which they are located.

Although there is no necessary connection between localism and

environmental practices and politics, there is some evidence that localist
organizations can, at least under some conditions, show a strong concern
with environmental issues. The other leading association of locally owned,
independent businesses in North America (the Business Alliance for Local

Living Economies) does support a variant of localism that is linked to the
social and environmental responsibility goals. Not all businesses that join
the local chapters of the alliance are green, socially responsible, local
businesses, but some of them are, and part of the mission of the association
is to help businesses to develop their role as social and environmental
stewards (Hess forthcoming). Furthermore, our research revealed several
areas of innovation where locally owned or controlled enterprises showed
some concern with environmental and/or social responsibility goals such
as poverty reduction. Examples included publicly owned local electricity
agencies that were investing in renewable energy, public energy conservation
utilities, public transit systems that were undergoing a greening process,
reuse stores that had diversified into building deconstruction and
remanufacturing businesses, and nonprofit farms and community gardens
(Hess et al. 2007). In some cases, there was also evidence of deep concern
with poverty reduction and social justice goals, such as in nonprofit reuse
centers connected with Habitat for Humanity or urban job training
programs. Those organizations showed some evidence for the emerging
paradigm of ‘just sustainability’ at the local level, where the justice concerns
associated with environmental justice organizations have converged with
the environmental concerns associated with urban sustainability organizations
(Agyeman et al. 2003; Agyeman 2005).

One of the areas of greatest potential for linking localism and environ35
mental practices is through locally controlled energy development. In the
USA progress on the issue is slow partly because electricity generation and
transmission is largely in the hands of private corporations, and because
about half of all electricity generation in the country is based on coal.
Although there are a few cities that own their own generation and
distribution systems, only a few of those public power cities (e.g., Austin,
Sacramento, and Seattle) are leaders in the development of renewable
energy and programs that address low-income consumers. Of more promise
in the privatized electricity systems of the USA is the development of
community choice legislation, which allows cities to aggregate consumers
and develop bid requirements that include a renewable energy percentage

in the purchase. Not only does aggregation reduce costs to the consumers,
but when combined with urban bonds that support distributed renewable
energy construction, it can create a new form of import substitution.
The model program in the USA is in San Francisco (Fenn 2004; Hess
et al. 2007).

The peer-reviewed literature on localism and renewable energy is to
date quite limited, and much of it has tended to focus on reasons for
resistance to wind farms. Local ownership, control over site location, and
citizen participation in a planning process that is perceived as fair are
crucial factors that have consistently affected local acceptance of new wind
farms in North America and Eruope (Breukers and Wolsink 2007;
Firestone and Kempton 2007; Gross 2007; Jobert et al. 2007; Woods
2003). In Denmark, the decline of local, cooperative ownership and the
increase in the scale of wind farms have led to increased opposition to
wind power (Hvelplund 2006), and in a study of wind energy in South
Wales, support was higher among older males, who were often former
coal miners with beliefs more favorable to local and worker ownership
(Devine-Wright 2005). In Japan, environmental and ownership considerations
were primary factors that favored increased support for community wind
energy (Maruyama et al. 2007). One mechanism used to garner support
was to name each turbine and to have investors’ names inscribed on wind
towers. In Sweden, where there has been strong support for renewable
energy and local control, energy companies have dominated the planning
process. The result is that the energy supply framework has continued to
triumph over energy conservation and renewable energy in the policy-making
and planning process (Palm 2006).

Localism, food, and agriculture

Due to the significant presence of rural sociologists and interdisciplinary
food and agriculture scholars, the literature on localism and agriculture is
the most developed among the various industries affected by localist
politics. Local food systems include farmers’ markets, community gardens,
local farms, locally oriented restaurants, food security and hunger
organizations, retail food cooperatives, and other interconnected organizations.
The literature has not yet explored the connection between local food
activism and the localist movement in the small business sector as described
above, but there is some awareness of the connection with import
substitution as a strategy of economic development (e.g., Bellows and
Hamm 2001). There are also interesting discussions of rural development
that are relevant to the broader localist critique of high-tech manufacturing
as the only important regional economic development strategy. For example,
Marsden et al. (2002) have contrasted ‘economies of scope’ – or dense,
locally based networks of organizations – with two alternative rural
development strategies: the export-oriented, agro-industrial logic and the

postproductivist approach of utilizing farmland for other activities such a

tourism and recreation (see also Sonnino and Marsden 2006).

As noted above for localism in the retail sector, local food and agricultural

networks sometimes show concern with sustainability and social justice

issues, but the convergence is not always present. As a result, one of the

themes of the food and agriculture literature is the possible divergence of

interests, even the ‘local trap’ of assuming that local food systems are more

sustainable and just than nonlocal systems (Born and Purcell 2006). Local

food can cover a broad range of production techniques, of which only
some would be labeled organic or even environmentally friendly. The split
between local and organic is sometimes discussed as the ‘bifurcation
thesis’, or the claim that transformation of organic farming shifted from a
locally oriented social movement in the 1970s to a globally oriented
industry by the early 2000s with large, organic farms that produce food
for sale in distant supermarkets. Although the social movement side of
the organic movement has migrated toward localist issues, the bifurcation
of the organic market into an industrial and local sector may be an
oversimplification. For example, an Australian study found that large,
organic growers were not less likely than small growers to sell directly to
local consumers (Lockie and Halpin 2005; see also Campbell and Liepins
2001; Guthman 2002, 2004).

Another issue identified in the food and agriculture literature on
localism is the confusing status of ‘terroir’ products, or foods that are
grown with a local designation (e.g., ‘Vermont maple syrup’) for sale largely
in nonlocal markets. The foods are part of global commodity chains, and
they are often conventionally grown and processed food products that
utilize local branding for marketplace differentiation and a price premium
(Bérard and Marchenay 2006; Giraud et al. 2005). Increasingly, large retail
food corporations are also including local foods in their product offerings.
In this case, locally grown food is sold locally but often via supermarket
stores that are not locally owned, thereby severing local farm-to-consumer
networks from locally owned, independent retail and taking profits out of
the community. Consequently, this configuration of ‘local food’ may offer
limited benefits for the localist concern of enhancing local ownership, and
it may also offer limited environmental benefits. Here, the local has simply
become another global brand.

Studies of the local food sector also contribute other cautions about the
limitations of agro-food localism. A ‘parochial’ or defensive form of localism
emphasizes the defense of local farms and cultural boundaries between a
place-based community and its outside (Hinrichs 2003; Winter 2003).
The ‘defensive’ posture in favor of buying from local farms is not
automatically linked to concerns with food quality and environmental
sustainability (Winter 2003). Furthermore, the growth of direct sales via
farmers’ markets and farm stands can negatively affect other forms of
localism, such as sales through locally owned retail stores (Morris and

Buller 2003). However, the tensions and internal contradictions that food
and agricultural researchers have identified also need to be juxtaposed
with the potential that is also recognized in the literature. For example, it
is possible to identify a more flexible form of localism that is open to
issues of food diversity (Hinrichs 2003). Concern with buying from locally
owned, independent farms and businesses can be linked to increased
awareness of what I term ‘global localism’ (Hess forthcoming), such as
local first campaigns that advocate a hierarchy of purchasing decisions, so
that when local products are not available consumers look for fair trade
and fair-made alternatives or locally owned, independent businesses that
are located in other communities (Shuman 2006). To date the question
of how consumers might handle or adapt such complicated concerns with
the provenance of products is yet unstudied. There is concern that the
various definitions of local, product quality, and labor standards can
produce ‘label fatigue’ and confusion in the marketplace (Goodman 2004).

Another important issue that involves localism and the environment is
the ‘food miles’ debate. Local food advocates sometimes claim that localism
is inherently more sustainable because local food travels a shorter distance
from the farm to the table and therefore consumes less energy. The claim
was particularly disturbing to farmers in New Zealand, who depend on
the export of their products to global markets, and the claim has become
politically contentious, because distance may be included in emergent
European food quality standards. A study from a New Zealand university
found that even when transportation cost is included, dairy and mutton
produced in New Zealand are more energy-efficient, whereas onions
produced in the UK consume less energy (Saunders et al. 2006). However,
as localist advocate Michael Shuman (2007) has pointed out, the study did
not include within nation ground transportation, which would increase
the carbon budget of New Zealand lamb. The food miles debate is likely
to continue as new research emerges that measures various types of food,
agricultural practices, and transportation networks. Where food production
is more sustainable due to lower heating costs, lower petrochemical inputs,
and other factors, and where the distance between local farms and local
consumers is relatively low, the total energy consumed may be lower for
local food. However, because corporate food systems and supermarkets
aggregate food shipments, and consumers can purchase many items on
one shopping trip to a supermarket, in at least some cases the nonlocal
corporate system may be more energy-efficient. Comparisons between
the two systems suggest that there is considerable variability across food
products (Wallgren 2006).

Concerns have also been raised about the labor practices of small farms
and the potential disjuncture between the niche market of local, organic
food and the broader politics of agricultural farmworker justice and urban
food security (Allen et al. 2003; Dupuis et al. 2006; Guthman et al. 2006).
However, others have pointed out that the survival of small farms is itself

also an economic justice issue (Bell 2004). Some aspects of the local food
system, such as community gardens, are obviously better positioned to
address justice issues such as food security than the middle-class, farmers’
markets and locally oriented restaurants (Ferris et al. 2001; Hess and Winner
2007; Lawson 2005). Again, the issue is complicated because some
farmers’ markets are located in low-income neighborhoods and offer food
stamp services for the poor, some community-supported farms offer
scholarships for low-income members, and some restaurants donate excess
food to food pantries. In short, the food and agriculture literature presents

a complex portrait of localism, with some aspects of local food networks
performing better than others, depending in part of what type of definition
of equity or justice is employed.

Conclusion

In the USA localism is a social movement built around various networks
that advocate greater local ownership of the economy. In addition to the
networks of advocates and activists that can be found in local communities,
there are also umbrella organizations, such as the Business Alliance for
Local Living Economies, the American Independent Business Alliance,
and various federating organizations that link together alternative food and
agriculture networks. The unifying thread in the movement is shared
opposition to the deleterious effects of increased corporate control over
regional economies and support for efforts to regain a greater degree of
local economic and political sovereignty. Among the negative effects of
corporate globalization are the degradation of local environments through
suburban sprawl, poor planning, pollution, and destruction of green spaces.
However, as I have argued, because localism is primarily about increased
local ownership, the interest in addressing environmental problems varies
by organization, region, and industry. There is considerable potential
for locally owned, independent business organizations and nonprofits
to address environmental and social justice issues, but the potential is not
always realized.

Localism has also been criticized as a potentially ineffective level or
scale for political action, because the negative side effects of globalization
require redress at the level of national governments and international
governmental organizations (Lake 2002). In reply, advocates of localism
note that political changes that limit the mobility of capital and anchor it
in networks of local civic institutions can be an effective strategy to increase
control over the local economy (DeFilippis 1999). Likewise, strategies of
building local ownership, local regulation of nonlocal businesses (such as
living wage campaigns), and local market development can be brought
together effectively (Pendras 2002). Whatever one’s final verdict on
localism as an effective political strategy, the literature reviewed here
suggests that there is a need for what Dupuis and Goodman (2005) call

‘reflexive politics of localism’, that is, an approach to localism that recognizes
both its strengths and weaknesses as a social movement and economic
development strategy. My assessment of localism is more optimistic than
theirs, but I also think that for localist campaigns and advocacy to achieve
their potential, they need to be linked to broader movements and policy
reforms at the national and international level.

Short Biography

David J. Hess is Professor of Science and Technology Studies and director
of the Program in Ecological Economics, Values, and Policy at Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute. He is the author or coauthor of a dozen books and
coedited volumes, including Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry
(MIT Press). His research and that of his colleague Langdon Winner on
localism was funded by the National Science Foundation, and case studies
are available at his Web site, www.davidjhess.org.

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