The Contextualization Of Activism

The Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice defined activism as “action on behalf of a cause, action that goes beyond what is conventional or routine.”(Anderson and Herr, 19)
However, one presently encounters manifestations of activism in daily life: social media feeds are plagued with narratives that compel one to engage in clicktivism, while the local cafes are riddled with banners that implore one to stand in solidarity with coffee-workers from a Latin American country. In the short span of a decade since its definition, activism has gone from being unconventional to becoming an inevitable part of one’s routine.

The conventionality of activism is a double-edged sword: while it brings with it increased avenues of civic engagement, it also restricts society’s comprehension of the things it recognizes as activism. In a neoliberal, globalizing world where the export and import of ideas is as common as the export and import of goods, it is fairly easy for aspiring activists to believe that activism looks the same wherever it is practiced. The conventionalization of activism risks the decontextualization of activism.
In this scenario, The Green Belt-Movement and Wangari Maathai’s narrative of activism become especially apposite in highlighting the importance of the contextualization of activism: Maathai’s motivations, strategies and impact serve as a reminder to activists that what counts as activism depends on what is conventional.
This essay highlights this by closely examining the contextualization carried out by Maathai on the local and global
scales.
Figs and Mugumos: The Intersectionality of Culture and Cause
Much of the inspiration behind Maathai’s perspective on nature and her strategies of action stem from a cultural valuation of the environment. The fig tree wasn’t just a photosynthetic entity: it was the altar under which Gikuyu’s nine daughters were wed. (Maathai, 5)
Hence, Maathai learnt from her mother, as did most other Kikuyu children from their mothers, that the fig trees were holy; Mugumo. Consequently, the fig trees were never used as firewood or sustenance, and remained untouched.
However, in the wake of colonialism, most of these cultural comprehensions of nature were traded in for Anglicized comprehensions of the world, wherein those trees were “figs” and not “mugumos”. Therefore, colonialism effectively displaced the currency of culture with the currency of economy, resulting in the rapid felling of fig trees.

Maathai was quick to grasp the intersectionality between culture and conservation and capitalized on this recognition by according a cultural significance to environmental actions. An exemplar of this is the creation of the first “green belt”: the seven trees that formed the first green belt were all representative of prominent African community leaders from different tribes. In ascribing that status to the trees, Maathai used the existing cultural knowledge system, including local language, as a launchpad to facilitate discourse around environmentalism and civic duty: she presented the unfamiliar through the familiar.
Additionally, she spoke of progressive ideas such as civic duty within the framework of local knowledge systems which was empowering given that most colonies had been fed the narrative of Western ideology being the sole representative of such ideas.

In employing this local rhetoric, Maathai effectively used existing knowledge systems to exercise activism. This provides an important takeaway for modern-day activists and is essential in the process of the contextualization of activism: it is not always the undertaking of the activist to act through radical measures such as the breakdown of systems: sometimes the most important thing an activist can do is to facilitate an alternate understanding of an issue via existing systems. An act that can be as simple, yet as profound, as calling a tree “Mugumos” as opposed to “Fig”.

Harambee: Gender, Politics and The Green Belt
“When I reflect on the years leading to the creation of the green belt movement and the years of its emergence and growth, it also seems no coincidence that it was nurtured during the time the global women’s movement was taking off, or that it flourished during the decade for women the United Nations declared in Mexico City.” (Maathai, 125)

An activist’s success is a as dependent on the contextualization of activism on a local scale, as it is on the contextualization of a cause on the global scale. The 1960s-1970s marked the rise of liberalism, as well as the rise of feminism within political frameworks. Maathai effectively capitalized on the dominant beliefs of the period, by allowing the Green Belt Movement to be interpreted as more than just an environmental cause: by speaking of the movement in the larger framework of eco-feminism and equating it to “Harambee”, Maathai transformed the movement to an umbrella cause. This is significant because it allowed for a diversity of stakeholders to become part of the cause: from the local masses that supported Kenyatta to the global masses delved in the UN’s decade for women: Maathai’s movement was well-aligned to the reigning beliefs of a time. This serves as an effective strategy because it melds the movement into existing larger causes: it encourages activists to converge their causes together as opposed to fighting individual battles.

Conclusion
Maathai’s activism pushes back against the conventional idea of activism: it serves as an exemplar for activists to seek meaning and solutions in daily practice as opposed to only conceiving of a new normal as the ideal solution. Maathai’s narrative teaches one the value the strength of the conventionalization of activism as part of daily routine without the decontextualization of activism.