Hybrid activism : paths of globalisation in the Brazilian environmental movement

Focusing on two case studies of environmental activism in Brazil, this paper
argues against theories that consider local and global activism as two separate
realms. Instead, it is argued here that transnational activists circulate across the
two spaces. In the global spaces, they build alliances with foreign groups, and in
the local ones, they deal with the national state, other organised groups and
ordinary communities living inside environmental areas they aim to protect.
Activists live in both spheres and as they move, they carry with them local and
global meanings, knowledge and forms of action and organising, mixing them
through the continuous action of two mechanisms: adaptation and emulation. In
this way, activists’ biographies – their lived experience, their meanings and
strategies – intermingle with both spaces in one single trajectory of activism.
Discussing the existing literature on transnational social movements, I will argue
that they forge hybrid identities in the sense of being at the same time local and
global.
Keywords: hybrid activism; transnational social movements; emulation;
adaptation; trajectories of activism.