Compatibility and conflict between environmentalist and occupational identities in Northern California’s forests

This study examines the relationship between occupational identity and attitudes toward environmentalism, using interviews with 55 workers in northern California, including loggers, governmental employees, and members of environmental organizations. The results suggest that attitudes toward environmentalism are shaped by and reflective of the ways participants identify with their work, which is itself a product of both internal (community) and external (stigma) forces. In particular, this relationship appears in the types of environmental knowledge possessed and preferred by participants, debates about active versus passive management, and long-lasting historical narratives form the timber wars. Ultimately, workers are fairly flexible in their attitudes toward the landscape, and they are willing even to shift their own occupational identity over time, as new forest issues emerge. However, they are often more rigid when it comes to perspectives of others, and this poses some challenges for the future of collaboration in western forest management.