TY - JOUR
T1 - Are you a 'Green Guide'?
T2 - Conservation, environmentalism and citizenship in the British Girl Guides Association, 1986-1992
AU - Edwards, Sian
N1 - Funding Information:
Historically, fundraising had long played a role in the GGA, which as a charity relied on donations and subscriptions to maintain its activities. The 1980s, however, saw the significant presence of the discussion of fundraising initiatives within the magazines. Members were regularly reminded to contribute to the Girl Guide Friendship Fund (GGFF), a donation scheme set up in 1964 intending to support Guiding around the world, particularly in countries that were deemed to be ‘disadvantaged’. The fund financially supported Guides from a range of countries facing a variety of issues, which included the impact of natural disasters. Contributions to the fund were represented as being an important part of supporting the worldwide ‘sisterhood of Guiding’ and a ‘token of love and friendship which exists between Guides throughout the world’. In 1985, members of the Brownies (a younger section of the movement) were challenged to ‘turn a cup of tea into a meal for a hungry child’ by organizing a charity tea party to raise funds for ‘hungry children in Africa’ with Save the Children; in 1989, Today’s Guide advertised World Vision’s ‘24 hour famine’, which challenged members to go without food for a day to raise money for the same cause. The frequency and prominence of such fundraising adverts and articles within the magazines reflected how fundraising was, in the words of Today’s Guide, ‘part of being a Guide’ and therefore directly linked to ideas of good citizenship within the organization. The frequency of these moral appeals reveals how understandings of citizenship within the movement drew upon nineteenth-century models of respectable citizenship, philanthropy and charity, to call members to action. This can be seen as a direct response to Thatcherite welfare policy, which saw the growth of ‘common-sense humanitarianism’ with the formation of charities and public relief campaigns, for both domestic and international causes. Yet, as Lucy Robinson has argued, it must also be understood within Thatcherite discourses of active citizenship, in which individuals were responsible for community welfare, and had a moral obligation to contribute to addressing societal ills.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2023/2/1
Y1 - 2023/2/1
N2 - This article explores the meaning and significance of environmental education within the British Girl Guides Association (GGA) in the period 1986–92. It considers how the youth organization reconceptualized meanings of citizenship in the wake of increased public and political concern surrounding the world environment. In doing so, it builds upon our understanding of the organization, by exploring changing understandings of citizenship within the movement in the context of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. It argues that a growing awareness of environmentalism in the latter half of the twentieth century saw a move towards an ideal of planetary citizenship, with members being encouraged to become agents of environmental change through their engagement with environmental issues and humanitarianism. This marked a shift in an organization that had long emphasized nationalistic ideas of duty and service, as organizational periodicals played a significant role in establishing in popular discourse an idea of green citizenship, which crossed geographical boundaries. Yet the organizational focus on world conservation also reinforced traditional models of citizenship, with an emphasis on civic duty and individual responsibility, which were reinforced in the social and political climate of the 1980s. Indeed, the construction of green citizenship within the organization was forged within, and reinforced, Thatcherite discourses of active citizenship and consumer duty, which had underpinned Thatcher’s ‘green turn’. Moreover, reflecting the emphasis on traditional gender roles in the 1980s, the green citizen was a gendered concept with girls encouraged to prepare for their roles as both young green consumers and future green homemakers. Therefore, green citizenship, as it was mobilized in the GGA, was a nebulous entity that was underpinned by a variety of contemporary socio-political discourses and played out on a variety of spatial registers, from the global to the individual.
AB - This article explores the meaning and significance of environmental education within the British Girl Guides Association (GGA) in the period 1986–92. It considers how the youth organization reconceptualized meanings of citizenship in the wake of increased public and political concern surrounding the world environment. In doing so, it builds upon our understanding of the organization, by exploring changing understandings of citizenship within the movement in the context of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. It argues that a growing awareness of environmentalism in the latter half of the twentieth century saw a move towards an ideal of planetary citizenship, with members being encouraged to become agents of environmental change through their engagement with environmental issues and humanitarianism. This marked a shift in an organization that had long emphasized nationalistic ideas of duty and service, as organizational periodicals played a significant role in establishing in popular discourse an idea of green citizenship, which crossed geographical boundaries. Yet the organizational focus on world conservation also reinforced traditional models of citizenship, with an emphasis on civic duty and individual responsibility, which were reinforced in the social and political climate of the 1980s. Indeed, the construction of green citizenship within the organization was forged within, and reinforced, Thatcherite discourses of active citizenship and consumer duty, which had underpinned Thatcher’s ‘green turn’. Moreover, reflecting the emphasis on traditional gender roles in the 1980s, the green citizen was a gendered concept with girls encouraged to prepare for their roles as both young green consumers and future green homemakers. Therefore, green citizenship, as it was mobilized in the GGA, was a nebulous entity that was underpinned by a variety of contemporary socio-political discourses and played out on a variety of spatial registers, from the global to the individual.
KW - Enivronmentalism
KW - Thatcherism
KW - citizenship
KW - informal education
KW - youth organizations
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85147337240&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/478bb03e-4d9a-3fdf-97d9-d9aa65f8a350/
U2 - 10.1080/13507486.2022.2142093
DO - 10.1080/13507486.2022.2142093
M3 - Article
VL - 29
SP - 978
EP - 1001
JO - European Review of History/Revue Europeenne d'Histoire
JF - European Review of History/Revue Europeenne d'Histoire
SN - 1350-7486
IS - 6
ER -