Chloe Kessler
Cornell University, NY·Social Science
As awareness of human-driven environmental change grows, it inspires political responses of many kinds, including extremist movements. Some groups argue that only revolutionary action can relieve pressure on the planet.
- Fields
Social Science
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
environmental extremism
political action
social movements
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Identify what kinds of environmental futures extremist environmental groups seek and trace the historical precedents for those visions, using text analysis of online archival material and media analysis.
- Test whether these desired futures motivate present-day action and determine what forms that action takes, through passive online observation and discourse analysis of group communications.
- Determine what role, if any, group members assign to violence as a path toward realizing their environmental futures, using online participant observation and interviews with extremist actors.
- Run a small in-person pilot study among the same groups to test the feasibility of a larger emplaced fieldwork project, while training students in qualitative scientific collection and analysis.
More about the research
Research on extremism has focused largely on tactics and organization, while the positive visions of the future that attract and hold members together have drawn far less attention. This project treats those visions as the object of study, on the premise that scholars and policymakers cannot explain or address environmental extremism without knowing what its adherents are actually hoping to build.
Why it matters
Efforts to understand and respond to environmental extremism currently rest on knowledge of how such groups operate rather than what they want. By documenting the futures these movements imagine and whether those visions translate into action or violence, the work could give analysts and policy stakeholders a firmer basis for assessing risk, and could broaden how environmental activism as a whole is understood.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
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The school
Cornell University: 37 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 537 research doctorates a year.
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