Rebels with a Cause: Exploring the antecedents and motivations of environmental activism in Norway

Social movements have been essential in constructing the foundations of the Norwegian democracy and welfare society. Owing to collective actions in the 20th century the living conditions, education, welfare, rights, and prosperity for large parts of the Norwegian population improved dramatically. Subsequently, new movements with other motives have emerged, of which some of the most visible today are concerned with environmental issues. Hypothesising that the main motivations of these movements are not instrumental at neither individual nor group levels, this thesis aims to explore other motivations of political engagement and action. Recognising that much of the existing research on social movements and collective action is quantitative and operates at a structural level, this thesis aims to complement these approaches with qualitative, thematic analysis at an individual level. The analysis is based on semi-structured interviews with nine participants that have devoted substantial parts of their lives to activism and participated in collective civil disobedience actions. The analyses indicate that while a generational divide in the motivational effect of perceived efficacy of collective action is evident, instrumental motivations in ego-centric terms are absent at the individual level and vague at group level. All participants indicate mainly selfless motivations within two categories; anthropocentric and altruistic, and ecocentric values. Further analyses, drawing on theorising in social psychology, political ecology, and the cultural turn in social movement studies in other disciplines, suggest that factors related to identity are the main motivators of political engagement; identities formed, expressed, and catalysed by factors like values, emotions, moral convictions, and experiences in youth and adolescence. Furthermore, certain transformative moments serve as catalysers that transform political engagement to collective action. While utilising social-psychological concepts and theories, and albeit briefly discussing the cases in terms of structural theories and context, the thesis suggests that the structural and quantitative approaches to social movement studies are too deterministic and insufficient to investigate and fully understand antecedents and motivations of political engagement and action. Moreover, the absence of ego-centric and instrumental motivations challenges the heuristic assumption of the rationally behaving homo oeconomicus that underlie much theorising in the political and social sciences.