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Interrogating the treadmill of production

January 2016

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Kenneth Gould

Brooklyn College

David Naguib Pellow

University of California, Santa Barbara

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Organization & Environment

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The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/1086026604268747

2004 17: 296Organization Environment

Kenneth A. Gould, David N. Pellow and Allan Schnaiberg

Afraid to Ask

Interrogating the Treadmill of Production : Everything You Wanted to Know about the Treadmill but Were

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10.1177/1086026604268747ORGANIZATION & ENVIRONMENT / September 2004Gould et al. / INTERROGATING THE TREADMILL

INTERROGATING THE TREADMILL OF PRODUCTION

Everything You Wanted to Know About the Treadmill but Were Afraid to Ask

KENNETH A. GOULD

St. Lawrence University

DAVID N. PELLOW

University of California–San Diego

ALLAN SCHNAIBERG

Northwestern University

This article is structured to answer a number of questions that have been raised over the

years about the origin, structure, and application of the treadmill of production theory. The

following questions are addressed: What was the theoretical structure of the treadmill of

production? Why does the theory focus on production rather than consumption? Was the

treadmill a dialectical or a linear change theory? How has the treadmill theory changed

under the growing globalization of production since 1980? Has the treadmill been evalu-

ated empirically? What forces have limited the diffusion of the treadmill in environmental

sociology? Is the treadmill more/still useful today for ecological analyses? For social

analyses?

Keywords: consumption; ecological modernization; environmental sociology; produc-

tion; social movements

I. ORIGINS OF THE TREADMILL THEORY

What Was the Theoretical Structure of the Treadmill of Production?

The treadmill of production was a theory introduced by Schnaiberg (1980) to

address the question of why U.S. environmental degradation had increased so rap-

idly after World War II. He argued that a growing level of capital available for

investments and the changing allocation of such capital investment together pro-

duced a substantial increase in demand for natural resources. Essentially, the major

changes outlined by the theory were that more capital was becoming accumulated

in Western economies, and this capital was being applied to replacing production

labor with new technologies to increase profits. These new technologies required

far more energy and/or chemicals to replace earlier more labor-intensive processes.

New technologies emerged from the organization of scientific and technological

research in universities and research institutes, as well as in the new “research and

development” departments of large firms. Moreover, unlike the prior use of labor,

the new technologies represented forms of sunk capital. To further increase profits,

managers of firms needed to increase the levels of production and sustain higher

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DOI: 10.1177/1086026604268747

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levels (because worker inputs could more readily be cut back as opposed to fixed

costs of machine operations).

The treadmill of production was thus, primarily an economic change theory,but

one that had direct implications for natural resource extraction as well as for the

opportunity structure for workers. In essence, the “treadmill” component recog-

nized that the nature of capital investment led to higher and higher levels of demand

for natural resources for a given level of social welfare (including wages and social

expenditures). Each round of investment weakened the employment situation for

production workers and worsened environmental conditions, but it increased prof-

its. For workers, this treadmill implied that increasing investment was needed to

employ each production worker. For ecosystems, each level of resource extraction

became commodified into new profits and new investments, which led to still more

rapid increases in demand for ecosystem elements.

Treadmill theory focused on the social, economic, and environmental condi-

tions for stakeholders (workers and community residents). Simultaneously, expan-

sion of the treadmill structure enhanced the economic and political power of share-

holders (investors and managers). Political gains for shareholders included a

growing capacity to induce both government and labor unions to support still more

investment of this sort, toemploy displaced and new workers, and to augment state

tax revenues. Over time, this increased political power of shareholders was

enhanced by their capacity to obtain still more political support for treadmill

expansion through an expanded use of profits for direct campaign contributions.

The initial treadmill theory was published in 1980 at the onset of a new era of politi-

cal conservatism in the United States. New antienvironmental and antisocial poli-

cies of the Reagan administration dominated the political landscape and offered lit-

tle support for the theory of the treadmill among both scholars and activists (see

below). Since 1980, in fact, most of those utilizing the treadmill theory in their

research have been younger scholars, especially in the global South (see below).

The treadmill theory presented an image of a society running in place without

moving forward. It represented a decrease in the social efficiency of the productive

system. This decreased social efficiency of natural resource utilization produced a

shift towards vastly increased rates of ecosystem depletion (resource extraction)

and ecosystem pollution (dumping wastes into ecosystems). Moreover, workers

and their families politically supported the expansion of this new capital-intensive

form of production. As workers were cast off by the growing treadmill,their major

consciousness was that accelerating this new form of investment was necessary

and sufficient for “social progress.” Thus, each round of socially dislocating

growth generated increased, rather than decreased, social support for allocating

investment to accelerating the treadmill of production.

Politicians were induced to provide direct and indirect support for such expan-

sion: They received strong support for doing this from investor-managerial groups.

And they received public support from workers and their unions who supported

virtually any and all kinds of “economic development.” Although some workers

and their unions attempted to resist these processes, even they were under growing

economic, social, and political pressure to accept this as the only path to social

progress, even if reluctantly. Any resistance to this change was labeled as antedilu-

vian, Luddite, old-fashioned, reactionary, and doomed to failure (see below) by a

variety of economic and political representatives. Ironically, this rapid growth in

support occurred despite considerable doubt about the future of the U.S. peacetime

economy after the end of World War II (with fear of a return to the economic

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depression of the 1930s). Within 5 years, however, the accumulated savings from

the wartime period were mobilized to create vast new infrastructural and manufac-

turing investments to stimulate production expansion.

Throughout this period of about 1945 to 1960, the promises of unlimited energy

(especially atomic energy) and newly accessible mineral and other extractive

resources (especially petroleum) led to social and political inattention to ecological

limits and unthinking support for unlimited economic expansion. Early 20th-

century attention to “sustained yield” (Hays, 1969) utilitarian approaches to land

and water were largely dismissed, and emerging pollution problems were not well

researched or managed. Waste was mostly moved into the commons, with spillage

into water systems, dispersal into air pollution, and dumping in land systems at

some distance to cities. These presaged the “limits to growth” (Meadows, Mead-

ows, Randers, & Behrens, 1972) perspective, which emerged in the later 1960s and

1970s. They were largely ignored in favor of attending to economic expansion.

Part of this disattention was facilitated by the growing social class segregation

of the population. Middle-class workers, who benefited from the expansion of the

treadmill, largely moved to emerging bedroom suburbs. Blue-collar workers, and

many craftspeople, lived in cities or small or company towns where they struggled

with rising local pollution and community health problems, juxtaposed with their

need to preserve their jobs. Although pollution was a negative externality for both

white-collar and blue-collar workers, it was geographically and socially removed

from many members of the rising educated middle class yet increasingly dispersed

into communities of the working class. Middle classes lived upwind and upstream

of polluting enterprises. Blue-collar workers were induced and/or coerced to live

downwind and downstream or adjacent to community pollution, under the

decreased costs of local property and the limited wages of the blue-collar workers.

This class-based distribution of residential location insulated production decision

makers from the health/environmental consequences of their decisions (Gould,

2003).

Ironically, one of the precursors of the treadmill model was an early argument of

Barry Commoner, a socially progressive biologist (and later a Green Party presi-

dential candidate) who helped expand ecological consciousness in the United

States. Commoner’s (1977) ecological analysis of declining capital productivity

paralleled our own work. This was in stark contrast to the standard economic and

managerial focus on worker productivity. Both in the 1970s when Commoner

wrote and especially in the current political-economic climate, the obsession with

increasing worker productivity has dominated many policies. From the standpoint

of the treadmill theory, increasing worker productivity is often associated with

accelerating the treadmill—producing still fewer worker benefits from a given rate

of natural resource extraction. Indeed, raising worker productivity was the central

dynamic of corporate decision making in the initial theorizing about the treadmill

of production. The treadmill process aimed to displace many workers—through an

increase in physical capital per worker (and hence, potential environmental impact

per worker), using profits to raise production technology. The goal was to enhance

profitability or return on investment. Inherent in this process was a substantial

increase in energy needs and chemical waste discharge, as well as elimination of

habitats for flora and fauna. During the period since 1945, habitat destruction has

probably been the best marker for expansion of the treadmill (either through

resource extraction or waste disposal).

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Two outcomes of this emerged for workers. For most, this eventually led to a

decline in wages and job opportunities, what Harrison (1994) has termed the “low

road to development.” Part of this was accomplished by crushing worker unioniza-

tion through job blackmail (Kazis & Grossman, 1982). An ever-growing part of

this was created by closing U.S. plants and moving to locations in the global South,

where labor was substantially cheaper, workers were nonunionized, and workers

and politicians were desperate for new employment possibilities for their young

populations. From maquiladoras in Mexico to sweatshops and intense factory

work elsewhere, the rate of return on investment rose substantially. Workers in the

United States became more desperate for new investment, as noted above, and

workers abroad accepted new employment, which appeared to raise their living

standards somewhat. Both increase the potential for higher environmental damage,

often by eliminating existing environmental protection, because both also produce

greater economic volatility.

Yet there was a smaller class of workers who experienced this process as a “high

road to development”—their wages, skills, and careers were enhanced by their

incorporation into the new physical (and electronic) technological systems. This

included not only workers directly involved in the new production but also a wide

range of workers involved in marketing, financial analysis, and customer service.

In recent years, however, this high road has become increasingly susceptible to the

core logic of the treadmill. For middle-level managers, and educated professionals

of all types, there are strong pressures to increase “worker productivity” to sustain

corporate profitability by reducing expenses.

Beyond the core logic of the treadmill, this model generally encourages analysts

to take into account a range of factors that produce environmental insults as well as

understanding how these factors make environmental policy making so complex.

The treadmill model underscores the importance of paying attention to dialectics

and contradictions in the behaviors of individuals, groups, the state, and industry.

When we develop a sociological understanding of the constraints and choices

within which individuals and institutions exist, environmental conflicts and solu-

tions become clearer and yet more inaccessible. Although the majority of U.S.

workers would like to live and work in safer, cleaner environments, they are unable

and/or unwilling to take direct action to achieve these realities. Although most

Americans indicate that quality time is an important goal in their lives, they tend to

spend more time working every year. Elected officials must maintain their legiti-

macy with the voting public and secure the “monopoly” powers of the state (Tilly,

1978). But they routinely make decisions that erode state power and public legiti-

macy. Ratifying free trade agreements, which undermine the ability of nation-

states (and subsidiary forms of government) to exercise social control, starkly

illustrates this contradiction. Industry needs to secure and maintain the obedience

of its workers, but managers engage in practices that violate the social contract and

mitigate against worker trust.

The treadmill model also underscored the importance of social inequality,

power, and conflict as key parts of the social systems’ effects on the environment.

Many scholars simply surveyed environmental attitudes and concern. But tread-

mill theory offered an analysis of what people thought about not only the environ-

ment but also the behaviors of their social institutions, affecting the natural world.1

Using the treadmill as our tool, we have often taken positions that are unpopular

or that run counter to the prevailing consensus on a number of topics. For example,

there is a scholarly tendency to celebrate (and overstate) the influence of the envi-

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ronmental, antitoxics, and environmental justice movements (Bullard, 1993;

Dunlap & Mertig, 1992; Szasz, 1994). In contrast, we have used the treadmill

model squarely to face the reality that these social forces were (and remain) at a

major power disadvantage vis-à-vis political and economic elites. Indeed, we

believe that environmental sustainability/protection around the globe has declined

substantially despite the work of these movements.

This sort of “bad news” reporting in scholarly circles is generally unappealing

and often frustrating for those of us who would like to believe that both the environ-

ment and our societies are moving toward a state of sustainability. The same

dynamic applies to the debate between treadmill theorists and proponents of eco-

logical modernization, with the latter adopting a fundamentally upbeat outlook on

industrial practices (Garcia Johnson, 2000) despite continued and intensified eco-

logical destruction around the globe. This approach has, at times, met with both

acceptance and resistance from activists as well; they have a social investment in

reports that the global ecological crisis is serious but also seek affirmation that their

actions are having a positive affect on ecosystems.

Why Does the Theory Focus on Production Rather Than Consumption?

Schnaiberg (1980) initially outlined the substantial change in technologies in

the third quarter of the 20th century. The newer technologies were inevitably more

energy intensive and chemical intensive on one hand and less labor intensive on the

other. Capital mobilization for these changes in production technology arose from

a substantial postwar economic boom, which led to increased production and prof-

its. Next, these profits were disproportionately used to develop and introduce new

physical technologies. However, to amortize the fixed and operating costs of the

new technology, production generally had to be substantially increased. In turn,

this increased the demand for natural resources, both energy and other. Once in

place, the expanded production of the new technologies substantially increased

both the volume of production waste and the toxicity of wastes (due to increased

use of chemicals).

From the outset, then, the treadmill of production focused on decision making

in the realm of production. Its model of socioenvironmental dynamics emphasizes

production rather than consumption. Although consumers may be the ultimate

purchasers of some of the products of the new technologies, decisions about the

allocation of technologies is in the realm of production managers and owners.

Decisions about types of technologies, the use of labor, and volumes of production

are made outside the realm of consumer decision making. Individuals, communi-

ties, states, and corporations can consume only the outputs of a given production

technology. The majority of what social systems consume must be extracted from

nature (extraction being the leading edge of any production process) and then fur-

ther processed to generate a final product. Although consumers can accept or reject

these products, they have no influence over the allocation of capital to productive

technologies. Thus, it is within the production process where the initial interaction

of social systems with ecosystems occurs.

Many popular economic theories postulate the responsiveness of supply to

demand. Yet it is in the decision to provide supply, and the means by which that

supply is provided, where social systems and ecosystems first collide. Production

decisions may or may not be influenced by anticipated consumption decisions. But

the relationship between production and ecosystems, which provide the total stock

of potential materials for production, is a direct one. In contrast, the relationship

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between consumption and ecosystems is at best indirect. Consumption decisions

must be made in the context of previous production decisions as well as prior social

distribution decisions.

By recognizing the relationships between economic structure and political

power, the treadmill model contextualizes the role of consumer decisions within

the material parameters of their political-economic contexts. Consumer choice

devolves from (a) the constraintsof specific prior production decisions, (b) specific

prior economic distribution decisions, and (c) a specific distribution of policy and

decision-making power. To place consumption decisions first in our analyses

would obscure the power relations embedded in the political economy. Henry

Ford’s famous “consumer choice” comes to mind: He told the public they could

purchase any color Model T they wished “as long as it’s black!” “Consumer behav-

ior” studies contain few theories about the power underlying them. Obscuring the

distribution of economic and political power serves the discipline of neoclassical

economics quite well in its status quo reinforcement functions. It violates the criti-

cal analytical and empirical requirements of sociology, however. A key dimension

of the exercise of power is the ability to influence, if not dictate, the choices of those

less powerful (Lukes, 1974). Individual choices to not consume products gener-

ated by powerful actors involve an underlying power struggle between highly

unequal contenders.

The mechanisms through which human need and human desire are formed are

largely determined by preexisting conditions of production, beyond the basic bio-

physical needs of humans as living organisms (food, warmth, shelter, social inter-

action). Desire is socially constructed, and material desires are largely constructed

by material producers (Schiller, 1996). The transformation of socially constructed

material desire into human need is a result of social processes, which are heavily

influenced by those who control production decisions. Contrary to classical and

neoclassical economic theories that posit that consumer preferences determine the

contour of markets, this consumer behavior was consciously being shaped by

industry. The “gospel of mass consumption” was the successful construction of

consumer desires not by consumers themselves but by the captains of industry and

their collaborators in the advertising sector. Thus, the extraordinary rise in produc-

tive output after World War II was complemented by a rise in personal consump-

tion among U.S. citizens.

It may be argued that individual, community, state, and/or corporate consumers

may alter or terminate specific forms of production by consumer boycotts. How-

ever, these collective victories still do not empower consumers to determine the

means by which alternatives will be produced or even what alternatives will be pro-

duced. Indeed, it is possible that no alternative will be produced, thus freeing con-

sumer capital to be funneled into the consumption of yet other items already made

available by producers. In theory, the decision not to consume may terminate the

production of specific products. In rarer cases, they may even terminate specific

forms of production. Yet there are few if any examples of either of these termina-

tions occurring directly through consumer choice, and only a handful have even

been implemented through political pressures exerted by social movement organi-

zations (which are politically organized interest groups of consumers). Even the

famous grape boycott succeeded mainly in raising social consciousness about

working conditions among farm laborers; it was an economic and political failure.

Again, however, the decision of what alternative forms of production will be

offered for consumers to choose from is not in the hands of consumers. It remains

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with a small minority of powerful individuals (treadmill elites) who are empow-

ered through their access to production capital. Decisions that determine produc-

ers’ access to natural resource inputs and to ecosystem waste sinks arise from a

stratified and politicized society driven largely by:

•producers’ access to capital

•producers’ access to labor

•producers’ assessment of potential liability

•producers’ assessment of marketability

•producers’ assessment of profitability

Such producer decisions are influenced by the regulations imposed by the state

and by negotiations with their labor forces. This is why the treadmill of production

model emphasizes the role of nonelite individuals as citizens (polity) and workers

(labor) rather than as consumers (Gould, Schnaiberg, & Weinberg, 1996). It is also

why the model emphasizes collective actions (such as those of nongovernmental

organizations or social movements) over individual choices/actions. Nonelite

treadmill participants alter the nature of social system–ecosystem interactions

through pressuring private capital and/or state decision makers to make more

proenvironmental decisions in production processes. Much of the limited success

in achieving treadmill alteration in the post–World War II era was achieved through

social movement pressures. For example, most if not all environmental legislation

passed during this time was the result of progressive forces seeking to slow the

excesses of treadmill institutions. Similarly, as labor, treadmill nonelites may use

their role in physical production to directly induce capital actors to alter their pro-

duction processes. Organized labor has done so sometimes for environmental con-

cerns or more frequently, because of occupational safety and health concerns

associated with ecologically disruptive technologies (Schnaiberg, 1986).

Thus, the treadmill model implies that more democratic ownership and control

over production could ameliorate social and ecological problems more than

attempts to control rates of consumption or consumer choice of certain products.

Consumers can choose Pepsi or Coke or some low-calorie, “green” alternative soft

drink. Yet this is largely irrelevant if the ownership and control over all these prod-

ucts is in the hands of producers who are simultaneously displacing workers, tax-

ing the state’s resources, and placing great burdens on the ecosystem. Clothing is

another “consumption” example. Unless consumers in the North produce their

own clothes, they leave producers the appealing option of producing virtually all

clothing in sweatshops that exploit laborers and typically produce various ecologi-

cal disruptions (in both agriculture and transportation). So long as owners are free

to invest in low-wage countries (or engage low-wage immigrants in industrial

countries), consumers exercise little control over these production processes.

Unfortunately, consumerist approaches to the problem of the treadmill almost

never consider the goal of treadmill deceleration. The question of how much we are

consuming (i.e., growth) is rarely challenged. The focus is only on changing what

goods we are consuming. This is perhaps not surprising, as consumerist

approaches are fundamentally about protecting the right to consume as muchas

they are about corporate and social responsibility. For example, the major recy-

cling campaigns spearheaded by many national environmental groups in the 1980s

and 1990s emphasized recycling, itself an environmentally problematic industrial

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process (Weinberg, Pellow, & Schnaiberg, 2000). Yet they largely eschewed more

socially and ecologically effective practices of reuse and reduction of production.

In earlier analyses (Schnaiberg & Gould, 1994, chaps. 9-10; Gould et al., 1996;

Weinberg et al, 2000, 164-169), we demonstrated that as long as companies harvest

timber at increasing rates (i.e., increases in production), it matters very little

whether environmentally conscious residents are recycling their waste (i.e., con-

sumers) because any potential gains from residential recycling are offset by pro-

duction. This type of analysis preceded and informed research on “commodity

chains” by noting the multiple points at which social, political, and economic

forces affect each other and environmental protection efforts.

The treadmill model argues that the collective bases of historical successin

altering aspects of the political economy arise only through direct or indirect politi-

cal conflict with state and capital elites. Treadmill nonelites’ roles as individual

consumers are the “tail end” of the system, not the leading factor. In contrast, their

collective roles as citizens and workers offer the potential to alter the production

decisions of elites who essentially control social system–ecosystem interactions.

The treadmill model at least suggests the need for a more radical restructuring of

the political economy. Citizen-workers need to achieve more control over produc-

tion decisions. In this perspective, prolonged engagement in enduring conflicts

with powerful treadmill decision makers may be effective (Schnaiberg & Gould,

2000).

Production is the locus at which we can observe and measure the degree of eco-

logical withdrawals and additions, as well as potential solutions. Yet it is also

where industry leaders will fight the most to maintain their autonomy vis-á-vis the

state, environmentalists, and labor. Control over production is the critical battle-

ground for industrialists generally and where the waste industry, in particular, drew

the line in the struggle over the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976

(Szasz, 1994). Industry successfully fought to shift federal mandates for recycling

outside the production process onto consumers and states in an effort to protect

profitability and control over production. Globally, industry leaders engage in a

range of actions to ensure this control, from relocation to avoid unionization to the

use of private and state armies to intimidate, torture, and execute opponents

(Gedicks, 2001). For them, production is legitimately the exclusive province only

of the owner/management/shareholder class, with virtually no input from other

affected parties.

The treadmill is organized under the premise that producers, not consumers, are

the major driving factor in the political economy. Consumers, for example, would

prefer to be able to purchase environmentally responsible products, but this deci-

sion is ultimately up to producers. However, we should never ignore consumer

behaviors. Growth in urban pollution has been rising, in part, due to increased vehi-

cle ownership and mileages. These have offset a large portion of the emission

reductions gained from motor vehicle controls. This is a classic illustration of the

treadmill of production at work. In view of the unforeseen growth in automobile

emissions in urban areas combined with the serious air pollution problems in many

urban areas, Congress has made significant changes to the motor vehicle provi-

sions on the 1977 Clean Air Act, but the core problem of growth in consumption

and production of automobiles is left unchallenged.2

A policy focus on consumption is almost always the easy path: It generally

absolves industry and the state of responsibility for a host of problems:

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•it leaves production largely undisturbed;

•it fails to challenge the fundamental structure of the industry in question; and

•it often blames poor populations for not engaging in “enlightened,” “respon-

sible,” and “conscious” consumer practices.

Although the treadmill model’s emphasis remains on production, it could also

be said that it addresses the way that producers and other stakeholders literally con-

sume the ecosystem and become consumed by the (il)logic and seductions of the

treadmill. As such, it could be said that we have redefined or broadened our notions

of what consumption is (industrial and collective vs. personal/individual). The

study of the social, economic, and environmental impacts of personal consumption

is gaining greater visibility (see Clapp, 2001; Park, 2003; Schor & Holt, 2000) and

we welcome this development. However, scholars emphasizing this phase of the

product lifecycle would do well to remember that it is just that—a cycle that begins

with production.

Was the Treadmill a Dialectical or a Linear Change Theory?

One of the critiques of the treadmill is that it appears to be a theory of linear

change. There are two quite distinct aspects of our research on the treadmill. First,

we note that the initial theory of the treadmill was a historical model of changes that

seemed to have appeared in the United States and other industrial societies. Along-

side this historical pattern, Schnaiberg (1980) initially proposed that there were

many political-economic alternatives to the social and ecological impacts of an

accelerating treadmill. As workers confronted new social and economic restric-

tions, they would act politically to favor policies offsetting the treadmill tenden-

cies. Likewise, as environmental degradation began to have more pronounced

effects on communities and families, citizen-workers would act to reduce rela-

tively unrestricted economic control over ecosystems. In both cases, Schnaiberg

predicted that social and political actions would serve to reduce the growing influ-

ence of treadmill institutions and ideologies. Among other strategies, he listed the

following possibilities:

•small-scale entrepreneurialism in lieu of large corporate employment;

•direct state provision of essential public services (e.g., transportation,

education);

•profit seeking could decrease, in favor of other goals of corporate entities;

•rising labor costs could reduce capital available for technological innovation;

•state subsidies for provision of employment by the private sector;

•expansion of state agencies to absorb displaced workers;

•unsold production may raise inventories and reduce capital accumulation and

investment;

•firms could absorb more profits rather than investing them (e.g., in salaries or

bonuses);

•support for increased public sector consumption, to offset reduced consumer

demand; and

•increased taxation to reduce capital investment and enhance social services

(pp. 228-229).

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As part of his initial work, Schnaiberg (1980) described the dialectical dimen-

sions of economic growth and environmental impacts. He outlined three syntheses—

an economic, a managed (planned) scarcity, and an ecological synthesis. Each of

these would leave treadmill forces in a different level of dominance of the political-

economic system. The treadmill was quintessentially an economic synthesis. By

1975 to 1980, however, there were significant policies of environmental protec-

tion, which Schnaiberg labeled as planned scarcity. Here the state would limit the

degree to which treadmill institutions had access to ecosystems. At the other

extreme, the ecological synthesis would entail the state’s substantial control over

ecosystems, without regard to issues of profitability and of wages/employment.

Treadmill institutions would, theoretically, have to restructure their activities to

deliver employment and wages and to protect crucial aspects of ecosystem func-

tioning. Interestingly, the ecological synthesis bears surprising similarity to the

concept of sustainable development, the successor to Schumacher’s (1973) inter-

mediate technology development trajectory. Equally important, however, is the

fact that in the past 25 years, there appears to be very limited movement towards

sustainable development nationally or globally. Even the proposals of the Kyoto

conference, which quite modestly proposed to limit production of greenhouse

gases to reduce global warming, failed to find support in the United States (and a

complex mixture of support and opposition elsewhere).

So the theory of the treadmill inherently entailed a dialectical system, in which

social forces benefiting from its expansion would engage in political contests with

those diminished by such expansion. And in the past 25 years, there have indeed

been local, national, and multinational contests challenging the treadmill. Yet it is

our assessment that the empirical history of the period from 1976 to 2004 is one in

which the treadmill has only occasionally been slowed. It is more accurate to sug-

gest that its rate of growth has sometimes been slowed by political opposition. One

of Schnaiberg’s (1980) naive expectations was that the publication of the treadmill

model would lead to substantial mobilization of opposition to the treadmill.

Yet history has given the lie to his expectations. It is hard to argue empiri-

cally that despite the plethora of state regulations, the empowering of global

conferences, and the emergent networks of progressive social movements (non-

governmental organizations), the treadmill has been shrunk. There have been a few

modest victories, such as the increased energy efficiency of many productive enter-

prises and the reduction of air, water, and land pollution in a variety of locales,

especially in the United States and some other industrial societies. There has been a

rise of education in business schools about “environmental management” and new

social theories about ecological modernization as a form of reflective modernity

(Beck, 1992; Mol, 1995). And yes, there has been an enormous increase in

postconsumer recycling in industrial societies (Weinberg et al., 2000).

Yet treadmill structures have adapted quite well to these new challenges. We

could state boldly that increasing the return on investment has displaced every

other social and environmental goal in this period. Moreover, this principle has

become dominant in more societies through the forms of globalization that have

been dominated by investors from the previously industrial societies. Indeed, this

principle is increasingly dominating all forms of globalization, despite the resis-

tance by socially and environmentally progressive forces in northern and western

Europe, as well as indigenous peoples everywhere (Collinson, 1996; Goldman,

1998). We could go even further than this: It seems apparent that more of human

activities all throughout the world fall under the influence of the treadmill institu-

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tions and logic than was true in 1980. In one sense, this growing monoculture of the

production system is expressly antithetical to the goal of sustainable development

or to the even more modest goal of a seriously managed scarcity model (Stretton,

1976). From the perspective of the treadmill, the media representation of economic

change is profoundly misleading. When “productivity” increases, especially

through increased technology per worker, this is actually an acceleration of the

treadmill—producing higher production and profits with fewer workers. In effect,

this increases the demands for more treadmill investment by increased levels of

displaced workers. As we write this, more reporters are noting that job woes persist

even as the economy begins recovery in what is now becoming infamously known

as a “jobless recovery” (Krugman, 2003, pp. 73-75). This is a concept that raises

troubling questions about what exactly a “recovery” is if it excludes employment

security for workers. Paradoxically, consumer debt is at an all-time high, a scenario

we envisioned earlier (Schnaiberg & Gould, 1994, chap. 6).

So, we can argue that the treadmill theory was dialectical but that the empirical

history of the United States and global political economy since 1980 has been only

weakly so. Indeed, rather than the treadmill expanding linearly over this period, it

has expanded exponentially. As we will note below, this causes serious reevalua-

tion of various proposals for environmental protection, including the recent argu-

ments of ecological modernization theorists (Mol, 1995).

II. EVOLUTION AND APPLICATION OF THE THEORY

How Has the Treadmill Theory Changed Under

Growing Globalization of Production Since 1980?

Other than our own work, there has been little systematic application of the

treadmill logic to analyses of globalization. However, there were some preliminary

treatments of global change even in Schnaiberg’s (1980) initial work. In many

ways, even his earliest primitive analysis presaged the effects of NAFTA and the

World Trade Organization changes: a rise in investment in less-developed coun-

tries would eventually lead to reduced consumer spending and hence, to a reduc-

tion of U.S.-based production for the U.S. market. This in turn should have reduced

the environmental impact of U.S. production and hence, afforded more potential

for ecosystems to recover from past disruption (if the state intervened to pressure

the treadmill institutions to do this).

To trace the role of the treadmill under conditions of globalization, however,

requires some careful distinctions. One of our recent puzzles was the fact that the

rising U.S. imbalance of trade payments has left the United States as the world’s

largest debtor nation! Yet there has been little political attention to this situation,

which could, according to macroeconomic theories of trade, lead to a total collapse

of the U.S. treadmill structure. Why has this aberration caused such little political

ripple?

A partial answer seems to require us to distinguish between states and global

interest groups. When the United States experiences a vast array of imports for a

much lower array of exports, what does this mean actually? To whom is “the United

States in debt?” Ultimately, the answer seems to be, in part, to U.S.-based investors

and managers who have shifted production abroad and imported the results of this

“foreign production” (foreign investors have taken on an increasing level of debt in

U.S. investments in recent years as well). Because the treadmill’s major goal is

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increasing return on investment, after all, U.S. investors and managers desire to

reduce U.S. investment in favor of greater investment abroad, precisely because of

the attraction of lower overseas wages (and often lower environmental protection,

as in the NAFTA debates). In addition to offering this direct benefit to U.S.inves

tors and managers, this system pacifies more U.S. environmentalists (through

reductions of local production and pollution). And finally, in an era of downsizing

and wage reductions, the importation of more-cheaply-produced “foreign” goods

has permitted less affluent U.S. workers to buffer themselves somewhat against

their wage losses or wage stagnation. Interestingly, still a third benefit of this for

U.S.-based investors and managers is that it strengthens their claims that they need

labor and environmental protection concessions from workers and the stateto

remain “competitive” (often with their own overseas production organizations!).

In general, capital seems to have shifted more towards environmental degrada-

tion through production abroad than it has to environmental protection within the

United States or in U.S. investment-countries overseas. Moreover, there appears to

be a shadow “pricing” of environmental disruption by globalizing treadmill inter-

ests. They are grudgingly willing to reduce or ameliorate pollution from their pro-

duction facilities. But in return, they absolutely refuse to accept any limits to pro-

duction (actually, profit limits). Thus, we in the United States have cleaner streams

and rivers and some reductions of air pollution. But in return, ecological damage

due to logging, mining, and agriculture has increased dramatically since 1980,

both in the United States and in U.S.-investor locales overseas (at least as measured

by ecological indicators of habitat destruction and species extinction). The export

of hazardous chemical wastes and the transfer of toxic technologies has followed

the same pattern, producing extreme occupational health problems and ecological

disruptions in the global South as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cele-

brates improvements within certain environmental indicators as if they were

primarily the result of developing cleaner production domestically (Clapp, 2001;

Daykin & Doyal, 1999).

Indeed, in an age where there have been increasing calls for sustainable devel-

opment and sustainable biodiversity, the loss of habitat and associated species in

countries of the global South has rapidly accelerated since the United Nations Con-

ference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Although

some of this may be due to increases in population (Rudel, 1993), the majority of

habitat loss appears to have come through increased investment in extractive activi-

ties (agriculture, mining, and especially forestry; Rudel, 1993; Sonnenfeld, 2000).

This is the major cause of habitat destruction, despite recent and visible declara-

tions and policy mobilization by organizations whose main mission is environmen-

tal sustainability through population reduction and control (see, for example, the

Population Institute, Federation for American Immigration Reform, Sierra Club).

Loss of species diversity is further accelerated by the pollution associated with the

increased processing and manufacturing activity (e.g., refineries and petroleum

distribution, etc.). Many of the rates of natural resource extraction (e.g., oil mining)

and pollution (e.g., power plant emissions) have been decreased in the United

States and other industrial societies. But the globalizing capital flowing from

investors from industrial countries (now increasingly capital “service countries”)

has been guided by “cheap natural resources” and weak environmental regulation

in the global South, along with cheap labor.

Once again, this suggests we be extremely cautious in accepting arguments

about “hypermaterialism” (superefficient technologies) as predicted by ecological

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modernization theorists. It is true, for example, that there has been some decoup-

ling between energy consumption and GNP increases within the United States in

the past two decades. Yet it is not true that all of this “U.S. GNP” arises from U.S.

production. Much of the service revenues of U.S. corporations arise from coordi-

nating investment and production abroad. When we examine the ecological impact

of such non–U.S. production, we find increased materialism with few limitations

imposed by states or corporate entities on natural resource consumption

(Goldman, 1998; Sonnenfeld, 2000). Returns on investment abroad add to the U.S.

GNP, but ecological losses and natural resource consumption are not factored into

the U.S. production record (York & Rosa, 2003).

In its initial presentation (Schnaiberg, 1980), the treadmill was largely concep-

tualized as an analysis of the relationship of the U.S. political economy to the natu-

ral environment. Implications for other northern industrial economies were

implicit, and the relationship of those economies to those of the global South was

also alluded to. Nevertheless, it is clear that the treadmill itself already operated on

a global scale and had significant global implications. Schnaiberg’s The Environ-

ment was published just as

•the nonaligned movement of Southern nations was collapsing;

•the Washington Consensus on neoliberal global integration was gaining

steam;

•transnational electronic networks were still under construction;

•the Southern debt crises were appearing on the horizon; and

•transnational trade liberalization agreements were yet to be fully negotiated.

As those changes to the global political economy emerged, the need for a more

consciously transnational articulation of the treadmill model became clear.

The South Commission and the United Nations Conference on Environment

and Development (the Earth Summit of 1992, in Rio de Janeiro) both served to

focus greater social attention on the global dimensions of environmental problems

and the specific ways environmental problems were manifested in the global

South. The relationship between transnational economic production and growing

global inequality and accelerating ecological degradation were highlighted. As a

result, in Schnaiberg and Gould’s (1994) Environment and Society, the treadmill

was more deeply contextualized in global history and the transnational economy.

The South was seen as moving from scarcity to even greater scarcity. Historic and

increasing reliance of the Northern industrial treadmill on access to Southern natu-

ral resource pools, labor pools, markets, and waste sinks were given greater pri-

macy in this later iteration of treadmill theory. So were the implications of those

transnational connections for domestic and international environmental politics.

Here, the emphasis was placed on the transnational distribution of economic bene-

fits and ecological costs and the acceleration of withdrawals and additions. Result-

ing diminution of social returns to increased productive capacity and the structural

dependency of labor were also more clearly articulated. The focus was on eco-

nomic actors with growing ease of transnational operation.3The transnationali-

zation of the treadmill model was well timed to meet the era of “globalization.”

The local scale at which most humans experience global dynamics were seen as

increasingly shaped by changes imposed by globalization on national political

economies. Problematizing the then-popular slogan of “Think globally, act

locally,” Schnaiberg and Gould (1994) argued that due to the greater capacity of

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private capital actors to operate on a global scale, each locality was forced to com-

pete with others because all were in an increasingly vulnerable competitive posi-

tion. As a result, the effectiveness of local political action to protect the environ-

ment would be diminished and environmental protection conflicts would need to

match the scale of operation of capital.4

The growing hegemony of treadmill values and political economic forms mani-

fest in corporate-led neoliberal globalization was further addressed in the new fore-

word to Environment and Society (Schnaiberg & Gould, 2000). This brief intro-

duction to the earlier work identified the treadmill model as a set of global

processes, relations, and forces decreasingly tied to the U.S. state. We noted that

the treadmill had become more entrenched and less availableto deceleration or dis-

mantlement. Marking the 20th anniversary of the publication of Schnaiberg’s

(1980) The Environment, this forward articulated the extent to which the earliest

national-level model had transnationalized and largely defeated competing alter-

native models for renegotiating socioenvironmental dynamics.

However, it also notes the emergence of new and/or renewed national and trans-

national political coalitions in opposition to a transnationalized treadmill. Most

notably, by undermining the security of labor, treadmill transnationalization to

some extent broke the alliance among workers, private capital, and the state that

had been the primary engine of treadmill support (Rubin, 1995, and others have

called this the breaking of the “social contract” in U.S. labor relations). By simulta-

neously disempowering labor and accelerating ecological disruption, the transna-

tional treadmill made it possible (or even necessary) for labor to lend support to the

opponents of treadmill expansion at the transnational level. Labor-environmental

coalitions urged in earlier iterations of treadmill theory emerged more at the turn of

the century than they had in the 1980s (Gould, Roberts, & Lewis, 2004). Trans-

nationally organized “extralocal action” to confront the treadmill called for in

Local Environmental Struggles (Gould et al., 1996) emerged, especially in the

anticorporate globalization movement (Buttel & Gould, 2004).

In short, as the scale of treadmill actors’operation increased through processes

now termed globalization, the treadmill model scaled up to address the move from

primarily national to primarily transnational political economic arrangements.

Has the Treadmill Been Evaluated Empirically?

When the initial treadmill theory was presented by Schnaiberg (1980), it had no

formal empirical evaluation. Indeed, the theory itself had been grounded in ana-

lytic induction (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). In formal terms, this means that the theory

“fit” the data from which it was actually abstracted. So the 1980 volume repre-

sented a grounded but untested theory. What has happened in the period from 1980

to 2004? Most directly, we have individually and collectively tested how well the

treadmill fits social production trends in the intervening decades. This includes

work on Great Lakes water pollution (Gould, 1991, 1992, 1994), on local mobili-

zation for toxic waste control (Weinberg, 1997), on local wetland protection efforts

(Gould et al., 1996), on global environmental treaties (Gould et al., 1996), on the

rise of postconsumer recycling in the United States (Weinberg et al., 2000), on

ecotourism (Gould, 1999), on local alternative technology initiatives in the global

South (Schnaiberg & Gould, 2000), and on environmental injustice in the waste

treatment and electronics industries (Pellow, 2002; Pellow & Park, 2002).

Each of these studies had a different set of specific questions, but all are sub-

sumed under a general quest to see whether recent social reforms have led to more

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socially progressive and ecologically sustainable production. Although the details

of each study differ, they all fail to find a substantial weakening or deceleration of

the treadmill structures and processes. Indeed, as noted earlier, these studies were a

painful lesson for us on how resilient the treadmill has become.

It appears that there is more empirical (or political) support for the major con-

tending theory—ecological modernization—that has emerged in the past decade

or so (Beck, 1992; Mol, 1995). Central to ecological modernization theory is an

assumption that the design, performance, and evaluation of production processes

have been increasingly based on ecological as well as economic criteria (Mol,

1995, 1996; Mol & Spaargaren, 2000; Spaargaren, 1997; Spaargaren & Mol,

1992). As a theory of industrial change, ecological modernization suggests that we

have entered a new industrial revolution, one of restructuring of production pro-

cesses along ecological lines (Mol, 1995). Yet recent summary and empirical cri-

tiques of ecological modernization theory (Schnaiberg, Pellow, & Weinberg, 2002;

York & Rosa, 2003) indicate the methodological and theoretical limitations of such

supporting studies.

In their evaluation of ecological modernization theory, York and Rosa (2003)

compared the strength of ecological modernization theory with political economic

approaches to global environmental problems, including the treadmill of produc-

tion model. Drawing on a range of examples (the Thai pulp industry, global envi-

ronmental treaty ratification, the coal industry, the Dutch chemical industry, etc.)

York and Rosa concluded that there is stronger evidence supporting the treadmill

model than there is for the ecological modernization theory. This is largely because

the treadmill model actually evaluates more than the simple adoption of environ-

mentally responsible policies. They examined whether this produces positive or

negative ecological impacts locally and extralocally. Ecological modernization

scholars have, on the whole, not pursued this line of analysis.

It is certainly true that the treadmill theory is insufficient to explain all patterns

of economic and environmental change since 1980, but we believe the evidence

indicates stronger support for the treadmill model in comparison to the ecological

modernization framework.

What Forces Have Limited the Diffusion

of the Treadmill in Environmental Sociology?

Just a few months after the publication of Schnaiberg’s (1980) The Environ-

ment: From Surplus to Scarcity, Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United

States. He ushered in a neoconservative agenda, emphasizing state deregulation

and transnational neoliberalism. This new political zeitgeist of the 1980s was

clearly antithetical to the treadmill theory’s articulation of the need for “politics

over markets” (Lindblom, 1977). Its antienvironmental, treadmill-accelerating

agenda simultaneously validated the treadmill model while making resistance to

the treadmill more difficult. By increasing the power and liberty of transnational

corporations and treadmill elites, rolling back the initial gains of environmental-

ists, and launching an attack on the countervailing forces that sought to constrain

corporate power (Derber, 1998), the Reagan administration dimmed the prospects

for slowing or dismantling the treadmill just as the theoretical frameworkwas

making its intellectual debut.

The declining power of organized labor, which had been a powerful force pro-

moting both progressive distribution and environmental health, had some impact

as well. Civil societyresistance of the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., Shuman, 1998), offer-

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ing countervailing forces to the treadmill of production, also waned. Environmen-

tal and other social movements, which were often insurgent prior to thepublication

of Schnaiberg’s (1980) The Environment, became more conservative. They

became more cooperative with private capital and the state. Adoption of “Third

Wave” environmentalism strategies supplanted earlier insurgence (Dowie, 1995).

An increasingly professionalized mainstream environmental movement now

emphasized cooperative approaches, voluntary action on the part of treadmill

actors, and “flexible,” market-based approaches to source reduction and ecosystem

protection. This stance resonated well with the Reagan administration’s neoliberal

political-economic agenda (and continued into the Clinton era) but withdrew from

any serious challenges to the treadmill.

Transnationally, the Southern debt crises of the 1980s disabled many alterna-

tive development strategies adopted by developing nations. This crushed most

treadmill-alternative pilotprojects. The weight of international debt payments and

the international financial institutions’ structural adjustment policies suppressed

efforts to build alternative structures for production and distribution. Ideological

support for such efforts from “mixed economies” and social welfare states of

Europe was diminished as well. The combined influence of Reagan in the United

States and Thatcher in the United Kingdom shifted the global political climate and

also led to an upsurge in U.S. military interventions and muscle flexing around the

globe (Blum, 1995). Transnational insurgence against the Washington Consensus

model of global economic integration was displaced by new corporate libertarian

deregulatory regimes (Derber, 1998; Korten, 2001). Dismantlement of Eastern

Bloc state socialist economies at the start of the 1990s, and their replacement with

“shock therapy” policies of Western “free markets” removed the last global social

support for opposition to the treadmill. The treadmill emerged as the only path for

social and economic change, regardless of its ecological consequences.5

All of these changes to domestic and transnational political economies, and the

resultant acceleration of ecological disorganization, poverty, and inequality,

served to empirically validate the predictions of the treadmill model. Yetevenas

treadmill theory proved correct in assessing the causes, consequences, and neces-

sary alternatives to ecological degradation, it became less politically viable.

Those seeking to further their careers in the study of socioenvironmental

dynamics were thus deterred from adopting a theoretical framework that layin

direct opposition to state, private capital, and international financial institution–

policy regimes. A better option was to search for models that might be more ame-

nable to the political and economic zeitgeist. Mainstream environmental move-

ments had chosen to move toward Third Wave environmentalism, and the influence

of the mainstream environmental movement on the field of environmental sociol-

ogy should not be underestimated. With radical structural proenvironmental

change off of the political agenda, some environmental scholars retreated into

intellectual abstraction.

They sought insights and careers in constructionist models. These posed no

threat or challenge to power holders who controlled the gates for grant funding and

for policy-maker access. Others chose to focus on areas of apparent environmen-

talist success in an era of major environmentalist failure. They chose to reify grass-

roots struggles as national and transnational struggles waned. Others chose to

adapt Third Wave environmentalism into sociological theory. In this view, the

treadmill would simply self-correct for environmental limits through market

mechanisms. This supported rather than opposed the emerging neoliberal agenda.6

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In addition, some of the resistance to the treadmill model stems from its power

to nullify commonly proposed and often popular nonstructural solutions toenvi

ronmental problems (i.e., efficiency, recycling, appropriate technology, ecological

modernization, ecotourism, population control, attitude adjustment, voluntary

simplicity, etc.). Many of these solutions had become sacred cows of the environ-

mental movement at the time that Schnaiberg’s (1980) The Environment was pub-

lished, thus providing a political opening for treadmill theory to be simultaneously

cast as anticapitalist and antienvironmentalist. By presenting structurally based

critiques of the solutions offered by both treadmill elites and their environmentalist

opponents, the theoretical framework was left with few potential political and

intellectual allies. Even within the academy, the treadmill model is more often

critiqued as “depressing” than inaccurate, reflecting the model’s utility in debunk-

ing the environmental myths surrounding nonstructural paths to socioecologically

sustainable development trajectories. Environment and Society: The Enduring

Conflict (Schnaiberg & Gould, 1994) included critical analyses of recycling and

“appropriate technology” and more overtly called for political conflict as a means

to achieve sustainability. This position served to deepen the alienation of both

treadmill elites and mainstream environmentalists from treadmill theory.

III. THE FUTURE ROLE OF THE TREADMILL THEORY

Is the Treadmill More/Still Useful Today for

Ecological Analyses? For Social Analyses?

An increasing number of younger scholars are drawing on the treadmill, per-

haps because national and global environmental politics support and reflect the

treadmill model more than they do other theoretical frameworks. Battles over envi-

ronmental protection have recently become more contentious, more transnational,

and more multifaceted. The “Battle in Seattle” at the World Trade Organization’s

millennium round of talks, and the recent shutdown of talks at the World Trade

Organization meeting in Cancun, Mexico, attest to this. Environmental protection

is no longer restricted to the domain of policy “experts,” academics, and scientists.

People are starving while land and watersheds, forests, and ways of life are being

destroyed (Gedicks, 2001; Goldman, 1998).

Scholars need frameworks and models that reflect reality. The treadmill has

always offered this, particularly for academics who are willing to accept the possi-

bility that the trajectory of national and global environmental protection has been

limited at best. Abstract, detached modeling techniques and opaque theoretical

constructions are not as accessible, useful, or appealing to scholars, students, and

publics who seek to understand the contentious and ecologically disorganized

world. After more than three decades of institutionalized environmental protection

at the U.S. federal level, why is the United States more ecologically compromised

than ever before?7

Moreover, the treadmill offers a much more credible and useful theoretical link

between environmental sociology and other subfields within the sociological dis-

cipline. Although environmental sociology claims to be interdisciplinary (Dunlap

& Michelson, 2002), its weaknesses include its failure to build lasting bridges to

sociology itself. The treadmill of production bridges environmental sociology with

the sociology of work, Marxist sociology, political sociology, urban sociology, the

sociology of the world system, and the sociology of race, gender, and class.

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Equally important is the capacity of the treadmill to speak to all sociologists.

This affords them a broader scope to incorporate environmental factors into their

epistemological, methodological, and theoretical work. Nonenvironmental sociol-

ogists might deepen and broaden their approaches to sociological phenomena by

adopting what Humphrey and Buttel (1982) termed the “double determination”—

that approach to the study of society incorporates both social theory and a focus on

the natural world. Treadmill scholars have always understood that environmental

politics are driven by both social/human and ecological/natural factors and limita-

tions. Environmental sociology’s founders intended to challenge the dominant

Durkheimian paradigm, which restricted sociologists to explaining social phe-

nomena only through other social phenomena. A broadening of this approach is

intrinsic in treadmill analyses.

NOTES

1. Another key theoretical contribution is the link between the treadmill model and more

recent developments in environmental sociology. For example, the treadmill of production

predated the now well-established field of environmental justice studies and advanced the

argument that environmental problems and solutions are not shared equally across or within

populations. It laid a foundation for more recent research that focuses on how other forms of

inequality (such as race and gender) intersect with environmental policy. Schnaiberg’s 1980

work is cited in many environmental justice studies and texts, including Robert Bullard’s

(1990) landmark book Dumping in Dixie (see also Hurley, 1995; Pellow, 2002; Pellow &

Park, 2002; Walsh, Warland, & Smith, 1997).

2. As environmentalists and treadmill scholars now know, a combination of production

and consumption of automobiles and trucks has maintained high levels of air pollution in our

urban areas. Specifically, although motor vehicles built today emit fewer pollutants (60% to

80% less, depending on the pollutant) than those built in the 1960s, cars and trucks still

account for almost half the emissions of the ozone precursors (volatile organic compounds

and nitrogen oxides) and up to 90% of the carbon monoxide emissions in urban areas.

3. Special attention was given to the effects of treadmill penetration on more socially and

ecologically sustainable development paths and initiatives throughout the global South and

the mechanisms by which the treadmill would force out alternative development strategies

at local and regional levels were described.

4. The call for transnational, extralocal, political conflict with treadmill elites appeared

just before the embryonic anticorporate globalization movement would gain substantial

social visibility (most notably 3 years later in November of 1999 in Seattle, Washington).

5. The political climate for adoption and diffusion of the treadmill model became quite

hostile and difficult. Treadmill theory implies that deep structural changes in the direction of

progressive distribution and growth deceleration are central to any viable solution to envi-

ronmental problems. But the structural changes that were being implemented by transna-

tional corporations, states, and international financial institutions were in a diametrically

opposed direction. This made the possibility of implementing treadmill prescriptions

appear less viable than ever.

6. Each of these theoretical and intellectual tacks was less threatening to careers and

promised better intellectual markets. Structural analysis and neo-Marxism became decreas-

ingly fashionable in response to the external political realities. This was increasingly mani-

fest in internal professional organizational pressures. In short, treadmill theory became

politically and professionally inexpedient.

7. Studying levels of environmental concern or the public declarations by state and

industry elites about their devotion to sustainability can be useful for analyzing how individ-

uals and organizations produce discourses on and interpret environmental problems. But

these approaches do not allow one to examine the root causes of the environmental crisis or

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even the actual outcomes of state and corporate environmental policies. If scholars wish to

follow this line of analysis, the treadmill is a far more useful framework.

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empowerment of people, places, and producers. Humanity and Society,21(3), 241-256.

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Organization & Environment,16, 273-288.

Kenneth A. Gould’s work in the political economy of environment,technology, and development exam-

ines the responses of communities to environmental problems, the role of socioeconomic inequality in

environmental conflicts, and the impacts of economic globalization on efforts to achieve ecologically

and socially sustainable development trajectories. He is coauthor of Environment and Society: The

Enduring Conflict (St. Martin’s Press, 1994; Blackburn Press, 2000) and Local Environmental Strug-

gles: Citizen Activism in the Treadmill of Production (Cambridge University Press, 1996).

David N. Pellow is associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of California–San Diego. His

books include People, Power, and Pollution: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Move-

ment (with R. Brulle; MIT Press, 2004), The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immi-

grant Workers, and the High-Tech Global Economy (with L. S. Park; New York University Press, 2002),

Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago (MIT Press, 2002), and Urban Recy-

cling and the Search for Sustainable Community Development (with A. Schnaiberg & A. Weinberg;

Princeton University Press, 2000).

Allan Schnaiberg’s work has concentrated on issues of “saving the environment, from whom and for

whom?” since 1973. His book The Environment: From Surplus to Scarcity (Oxford, 1980) developed the

initial theory of the treadmill of production. His later collaborations elaborated this theoretically and

empirically in Environment and Society: The Enduring Conflict (St. Martin’s Press, 1994; Blackburn

Press, 2000), Local Environmental Struggles (Cambridge University Press, 1996), and Urban Recy-

cling and the Search for Sustainable Community Development (Princeton University Press, 2000).

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Llewellyn Nikash Leonard

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This paper examines the major structural characteristics of the anti-corporate globalization movement, its key bases and antecedents, its relationship with other global social movements (GSMs) and the key challenges it faces in the post-9/11 period. We suggest that despite the potential of the anti-corporate globalization movement to usher in major social changes, the movement faces a number of major crossroads in terms of ideology, discursive approach, and overall strategy. We argue that there has been coalescence of a good many GSMs, including the international environmental movement, under the banner of the anti-corporate globalization movement. We focus primarily on the interrelations of these two GSMs, noting that over the past decade there have been trends toward both the “environmentalization” and “de-environmentalization” of the anti-corporate globalization movement. While the defection of many mainstream environmental groups from the “Washington consensus” and the resulting environmentalization of the trade and globalization issue were critical to the “Seattle coalition,” there has been a signifi cant decline in the movement’s embrace of environmental claims and discourses, and a corresponding increase in its use of social justice discourses. One implication of our analysis is the hypothesis that while the current vitality of the anti-corporate globalization movement can be gauged by its having adopted an increasingly coherent ideological stance in which international inequality and global corporate dominance are targeted, to be successful the movement will need to coherently ideologically integrate social justice with environmental and sustainability agendas. Th e amenability of the environmental GSM to such ideological integration will have important ramifi cations for the future trajectory of the anti-corporate globalization movement.

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Arthur P.j. Mol

In contrast to the early 1970s, in the early 1990s the environment does not seem to wither away from public and political agendas and even seems to be entering the ‘economic agenda’. It can be hypothesised that the environment is on its way to becoming a crucial factor in the widely discussed transformation of modernity. To what extent do environmental considerations and interests contribute ‐ or may contribute in the future ‐ to the restructuring of production? Ecological modernisation theory is a valuable starting‐point for analysing the contemporary reflexive reorganisation and transformation of production along ecological criteria. The discretion on the basic tenets of this theory emphasises the major differences with competing theories on environment and modernity as well as some of the central points of criticism raised against it.

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Michael Shuman

The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech Global Economy

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Introduction: Critical Perspectives on Health and Work

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Jan 1999

Norma Daykin

Traditional understandings of the relationship between health and work have been called into question in what has variously been termed late modern, high modern and postmodern society. Conventional models, developed in the context of western industrial societies, are based on notions of work that fail to account for the experience of growing numbers of individuals. They also draw on ideas about the nature of science that have been challenged from a number of perspectives. Finally, they assume modes of political organisation which can no longer be taken for granted in societies where risks are often global and yet individuals’ experience of work may be more and more fragmented.

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