Call for Papers
AAG 2018, New Orleans
Session Title: Where's the Justice? Critical approaches to Environmental Justice research
Discussant
Dr. David N. Pellow
Dehlsen Chair & Professor of Environmental Studies
Director, Global Environmental Justice Project
University of California, Santa Barbara
Co-Organizers
Dean Hardy (University of Maryland)
Ellen Kohl (St. Mary's College of Maryland)
Session Sponsors
Black Geographies Specialty Group
Geographic Perspectives on Women Specialty Group
Cultural & Political Ecology Specialty Group
Session Description
In the 30 years since the United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice published their transformative report, "Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States" (UCC 1987), scholars have pushed for more engagement with critical theory, in particular critical race and feminist theories (Heiman 1996; Pulido 2000; 2015; 2017a; 2017b; Stein 2004; Pellow 2005; 2016; Holifield et al. 2009; Brahinsky et al. 2014). Despite the successes of the Environmental Justice movement at raising awareness of-and at times mitigating-disproportionate exposure to environmental toxins across gender, race, and class in the United States and beyond, it has not yet succeeded at meaningful transformative change within the social and cultural institutions that perpetuate such disparities (Pellow 2016). With the election of the US's "first white president" (Coates 2017), the importance of a Critical Environmental Justice approach becomes more urgent to challenge the practices of a racial state and the motivations of white supremacy. As a discipline intimately entangled with defining and practicing Critical Environmental Justice to affect transformative social change, there is still much to be gained from critical engagement with gender, human/non-human relations, and overcoming the still "impoverished nature of geographer's study of race" (Pulido 2017:1).
In this session, we hope to move this conversation forward with papers that explore, conceptualize, and theorize Critical Environmental Justice Studies. We welcome papers on topics that advance or explore theory, method, and practice in Critical Environmental Justice. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Black Geographies of Environmental Justice
- Feminist; Ecofeminist; Black Feminist perspectives on/critiques of Environmental Justice
- Pellow's (2016) four pillars of Critical EJ: intersectionality, scale, anti-state/anarchist movements, & racial and/or socioecological indispensability
- The role of white supremacy
- Settler colonialism, ethnicity, and the racial state
- Actor Network Theory approaches to Critical EJ (via Holifield 2009)
- Abolition ecology approaches (via Heynen 2016)
- Critical EJ studies at non-US sites
- Climate Justice and accumulation of adaptation resources
- Intersection of EJ and Climate Justice
- Human/non-human relations
- Critical EJ in Urban or rural spaces, including urban to rural connections
- Qualitative and quantitative approaches to Critical EJ
SubmissionTo submit a paper to this session, please send a title and 250 word abstract to Dean Hardy (
dhardy@sesync.org) and Ellen Kohl (
eakohl@smcm.edu) no later than Friday, October 20th. We will notify you no later than October 23rd about acceptance of your abstract for the session.
References
Brahinsky, R., Sasser, J., Minkoff-Zern, L.A., 2014. Special issue on "Race, space, and nature: an introduction and critique." Antipode 46 (5). http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/anti.12109
Coates, T. 2017. The first white president. Atlantic Monthly (October):74–87. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/.
Heiman, M. (ed.). 1996. Special issue on "Race, waste, and class: New perspectives on Environmental Justice." Antipode 28 (2). http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.1996.tb00517.x
Heynen, N. 2016. Urban Political Ecology II: The abolitionist century. Progress in Human Geography 40 (6):839–845. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0309132515617394.
Holifield, R., 2009. Actor-Network Theory as a critical approach to Environmental Justice: A case against synthesis with Urban Political Ecology. Antipode 41 (4), 637–658. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2009.00692.x
Holifield, R., M. Porter, and G. Walker (eds.). 2009. Special issue on "Spaces of environmental justice: Frameworks for critical engagement." Antipode 41 (4). http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2009.00690.x
Pellow, D. N. 2016. Towards a critical Environmental Justice studies: Black Lives Matter as an Environmental Justice challenge. Du Bois Review 13 (2):221–236. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X1600014X.
Pellow, D. N., and R. J. Brulle. 2005. Power, justice, and the environment: Toward critical environmental justice studies. In Power, justice, and the environment: A critical appraisal of the environmental justice movement, 1–19.
Pulido, L. 2000. Rethinking environmental racism: White privilege and urban development in southern California. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90 (1):12–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/0004-5608.00182.
Pulido, L. 2015. Geographies of race and ethnicity 1: White supremacy vs white privilege in environmental racism research. Progress in Human Geography 39 (6): 809-817. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132514563008
Pulido, L. 2017a. Geographies of race and ethnicity II: Environmental racism, racial capitalism and state-sanctioned violence. Progress in Human Geography 41 (4): 524–533. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132516646495
Pulido, L. 2017b. Geographies of race and ethnicity III: Settler colonialism and nonnative people of color. Progress in Human Geography. http://dx.doi.org/doi/10.1177/0309132516686011.
Stein, R. (ed.) 2004. New Perspectives on Environmental Justice: Gender, Sexuality, and Activism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
UCC. 1987. Toxic wastes and race in the United States: A national report on the racial and socio-economic characteristics of communities with hazardous waste sites. New York, NY: United Church of Christ, Commission for Racial Justice. https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1310/ML13109A339.pdf.
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Dean Hardy
Postdoctoral Fellow
National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center
University of Maryland College Park
1 Park Place, Suite 300
Annapolis, MD 21401
706.621.9376
http://www.rdeanhardy.com------------------------------