The double movement and the triple-helix

Divestment, decommodification, and the Dakota Access Pipeline

Bibliographic Data

ID4139520
AuthorsLeah Sophie Horowitz (0000-0003-3287-5891, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume55
Issue6
Pages1337-1354
Publication date2023-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0308-518X • E-ISSN: 1472-3409
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0308518x221147299
OpenAlexW4319862638
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited49

This paper investigates divestment movements' attempts to influence investment decisions. I use the example of #DefundDAPL, which targeted private-sector funding of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), an oil conduit crossing the Missouri River a half-mile from the Standing Rock Reservation. I analyze activists' engagements with banks as a manifestation of Karl Polanyi's second movement, that is, resistance to environmental destruction and human rights violations that accompany "commodification" (the subordination of social relations to the economy). I identify divestment as a "withdrawing" type of decommodification that restrains free-market dominance by defunding environmentally and socially destructive projects. Next, I explore how investment practices can be analyzed as a "triple-helix" comprised of three intertwined strands-ideologies, power dynamics, and private-sector policies-that pull one another toward commodification and/or decommodification as they coproduce each other in dynamic tension, creating a constantly evolving investment environment. Applying this framework to #DefundDAPL, I examine how activists' success in mobilizing societal ideologies to paint DAPL as an unethical investment was informed by banks' concerns about project profitability as well as by place-based conditions and relationships between banks and pipeline companies. Further, I find that private-sector policy changes in response to the DAPL controversy were prompted by evolving societal ideologies yet constrained by interbank power relations. In conclusion, I argue that a triple-helix lens helps unpack the black box of decommodification by revealing complex interactions among ideologies, power relations, and policy-making and demonstrates limits to private-sector initiatives' ability to impose adequate restrictions on environmentally and socially harmful investment practices

Commodification · Divestment · Economic growth · Economics · Ideology · Market economy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Private sector · Law · Mining and Resource Management · Natural Resources and Economic Development · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Finance

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