Scapegoat Ecology: Blame, Exoneration, and an Emergent Genre in Environmentalist Discourse

Transitioning to Decent Work and Economic Growth

“…Pick the product with an ethical label that stands for your social values on human rights and the environment, and shun products from corporations that have been shamed for undermining these values. While choosing the more expensive product that carries an ethical label also reflects a psychological need for virtue signaling (Orlitzky and Monga 2018), avoiding products from boycotted companies is linked to the phenomenon of ecological scapegoating (Schmitt 2019). As such, green consumerism helps to reduce complexity and provides meaning, identity and a normative orientation.…”

Rhetorical Constellations and the Inventional/Intersectional Possibilities of #MeToo

“…This feature of scapegoating is also present in environmental discourse through the process of “scapegoat ecology,” where rhetors focus “on a single person for being particularly harmful to the environment” even though “that individual’s actions have little to no largescale or long-lasting impact on broader environmental issues” (Schmitt, 2019, p. 2). Attending to an individual is “easier to comprehend and reconcile than blaming systemic factors” and “offer[s] an immediately satisfying moral tale” to assuage any sense of collective guilt (Schmitt, 2019, pp. 6, 9).…”

“…As James Klumpp and Thomas Hollihan (1979) noted, had the Ford presidency been implicated in Butz’s racist comments, “the sacrifice of Butz would not be sufficient” (Klumpp & Hollihan, 1979, p. 7). Turning to scapegoating may offer the public the misconception that the pollution has been fully purged and the order restored, which “remov[es] the pressure for change” at the societal level (Klumpp & Hollihan, 1979, p. 9) and may distract society from considering “other factors” as blameworthy (Schmitt, 2019, p. 9).…”

“…13). It is far easier to point the finger and identify culprits and wash our hands of the matter; it is far harder to turn “the microscope inward” (Schmitt, 2019, p. 3) and recognize our own or the system’s potential complicity, especially if we somehow benefit from the system as it currently stands.…”

“…She argued, “So much of what we hear about the Me Too Movement is about individual bad actors or depraved, isolated behavior,” which “fails to recognize” the role that “power and privilege” play in the pervasiveness and prevalence of sexual violence (Burke, 2018). The prevalence of scapegoating practices in contemporary media “perpetuates a sense that [individuals] are responsible for social ills and not the systems or communities that enable micro-level, daily infractions leading or contributing to those ills” (Schmitt, 2019, p. 10). Wherever scapegoating occurs, its narrowed focus provides a comforting but inaccurate view of the pollution that has violated the order and those responsible for it.…”