Contrary to the negative stereotypes associated with NIMBYism, Carol Hager’s contribution to the “Just Environments” series demonstrates how NIMBY protests can be beneficial components of participatory politics that result in social, political, and technological innovation. Contrasting case studies from Germany and the United States, Hager examines how, with varying degrees of success, local residents are able to resist unwanted development and environmental threats while imagining more progressive alternatives. In this light, NIMBY protests can be seen as initiating processes of community learning and innovation.
activism
Between Scholarship and Social Movements: In Conversation with Jeffrey Juris
As part of the International Dissertation Research Fellowship 20th Anniversary interview series, 2001 IDRF recipient Jeffrey Juris, opens up about his work as a scholar and an activist.
Hurricane Maria Exposes Puerto Rico’s Stark Environmental and Health Inequalities
by Alexa S. Dietrich, Adriana María Garriga-López and Claudia Sofía Garriga-LópezAs Puerto Rico faces hurricane-induced devastation, the “Just Environments” series publishes an essay by Alexa Dietrich, Adriana María Garriga-López, and Claudia Sofía Garriga-López situating the current catastrophe within a broader historical context. Viewing it as an unnatural disaster, the authors point to a confluence of postcolonial industrialization, lax environmental regulation, and the privatization of utilities, which have all contributed to the island’s deteriorating infrastructure. Moving forward, they advocate for sustainable economic development and reliable public services as means of strengthening already-existing resilient and adaptive capacities.
The Prison System as a Space for Producing Just Environments
by David N. PellowDavid Pellow continues the “Just Environments” series with a critique of prisons as sites of environmental racism and climate change. Facing exposure to contaminated land, water, and toxic substances, prisoners—who are predominantly poor and nonwhite—are subject to increased environmental risks, compounding the vulnerability and marginalization they experience through other social, political, and economic forces. One potential way to highlight these injustices is to collaborate across social movements—for instance, if campaigns directed at environmental and racial justice work together to tackle complex, intersectional issues.
Naming the Problem(s): Contextualizing “Just Environmental” Research
by Julie SzeThe first step in research on “just environments,” writes Julie Sze, is to name the sources of the problems at the root of the poverty/injustice/environment nexus, rather than their impacts alone. By revisiting the history of the terms environmental racism, environmental justice/injustice, and environmental inequality, Sze demonstrates how the specificity of each term led to different research questions and approaches. In order to align public understanding of environmental problems and possible “solutions,” Sze argues that scholars must clarify the roots of environmental problems―for instance, racism, capitalism, and colonialism.
Just Environments in the Midst of Earth Transformations
by Anthony BebbingtonConnecting the “Just Environments” series to the SSRC’s former Global Environmental Change Program, Anthony Bebbington considers the ways in which scholarship on sustainability science and environmental justice can learn from and reinforce each other. Reflecting on the edited volume Earth as Transformed, a product of the Global Environmental Change Program, Bebbington notes how discussions of justice, race, and class were conspicuously absent from its analysis. Three decades after the book’s release, environmental problems abound, and those mobilizing to address these problems have at times encountered violence. By juxtaposing ongoing earth transformations and environmental violence, Bebbington demonstrates that the production of just environments demands work across scale and place from a variety of approaches.
Climate Adaptation and Its Place-Based Expertise
by Sarah VaughnSarah Vaughn’s contribution to the “Just Environments” series examines the relationships between climate change adaptation, forms of expertise, and histories of modernization. Focusing on flooding in Guyana, Vaughn describes how bureaucratic forms of engineering expertise are challenged by citizens and NGOs, who demand more transparency and accountability in the execution of these projects. Climate adaptation projects are thus sites of political action, shaped by public debates about expertise.
Chile’s Reconstruction: “Not The Reality They Show On TV”
by Marian E. SchlotterbeckMarian Schlotterbeck is a 2010 International Dissertation Research Fellowship recipient and a graduate student at Yale University. In this Research Snapshot, she returns to southern Chile a year after the devastating 8.8 earthquake and explores the radicalization of political projects and social movements in the province of Concepción in the 1960s and 1970s. The Research Snapshots series is an initiative aimed at highlighting important and innovative research by SSRC fellows who are currently conducting or who have recently returned from doing international research.