Scales of Value: Insiders and Outsiders in Environmental Organizing in South India

AbstractThis ethnographic study explores challenges raised by distinctions between insiders and outsiders in community organizing. By examining conflicts between locals and nonlocals collaborating on an Indian environmental justice campaign, this study finds that those engaged in the collaboration had mutually opposed views of the ethical purpose of the campaign. Moreover, the opposition between these two perspectives was integral to how the distinction between local and nonlocal was produced and sustained. Anthropological theories of scale help to explain how these differences of ethical purpose both served to distinguish insiders from outsiders and set them at odds over how collaboration should proceed. This article contributes to the community organizing literature by describing how value differences can lead to conflict in insider/outsider collaborations and by recommending a flexible, tactical approach to working across such differences.