December 2, 2005
Enviros need to get social, says activist-turned-sociologist Marshall Ganz
Most of us can probably name a grandfather or great-aunt who was active in a chapter of a national association. My own uncle was a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. Yet how many of us can say the same about ourselves?
As voluntary associations fade from our cultural landscape, political participation is threatened, especially on the left, says sociologist Marshall Ganz. And, he says, that trend is undermining the environmental movement, which has long depended on engaged members to carry its banner. That’s why Sierra Club leaders recently turned to Ganz to figure out how to get people fired up again.
In 1964, Ganz dropped out of Harvard to become a civil-rights organizer in Mississippi. The next year, he returned to California, where he had grown up the son of a rabbi and a teacher, to work for Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers, eventually becoming the director of organizing. In 1991, after years of union, electoral, and community organizing work, he returned to Harvard to finish his undergraduate degree. And he’s been there ever since: a Ph.D. in sociology in 2000 led to Ganz’s current position as a lecturer in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
