Framing and Feeling Fuel Environmentally Responsible Behaviors of Black Residents in the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (5) ◽  
pp. 603-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen A. Hegtvedt ◽  
Christie L. Parris ◽  
Cathryn Johnson

Scholars have long investigated factors contributing to enactment of environmentally responsible behaviors (ERBs), largely among white populations. Although research has debunked the myth that black people express less environmental concern, few studies examine what influences their pro-environmental behavior. We focus on how the cognitively oriented cultural frames of environmentalism and environmental justice combine with overlooked emotions to shape ERBs reported by a nationally representative sample of 988 black residents in the United States. Results indicate that the environmentalism frame, indicated by environmental identity but not attitudes, enhances all the behaviors examined: general conservation, cost-saving conservation, recycling, and advocacy. Effects of environmental justice, however, are more limited. Passion for environmental protection likewise positively affects all pro-environmental actions, and moral outrage over the condition of the environment exerts strong positive effects on conservation and advocacy. In highlighting the role of emotions in conjunction with cultural frames on ERBs, new avenues for research emerge.

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Lloro-Bidart

The Aquarium of the Pacific is a 501(c)3 institution in the United States, beholden to ticket sales for its survival. In this article I show how its staff, and its animals, co-participate in an "edutainment" project, where the institution governs the bodies of Lorikeets through regulatory technologies crafted to ensure guests have a satisfying experience and become more conservation-minded. In this way, the Lorikeets are politically deployed to support the fiscal survivability of the institution, and in its conservation education project that imagines visitors as "advanced liberal" consumers, insofar as they choose their edutainment experiences and their environmentally responsible behaviors. The resulting guest-Lorikeet interactions promote sanitized encounters with wildness, limiting the development of empathic human-animal relationships. Staff, however, do develop empathic and intersubjective relationships with the birds.Keywords: biopolitics, biopower, green governmentality, human-animal relationships, person-based identification, egomorphism, Lorikeets (Trichoglossus haematodus)


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-153
Author(s):  
Adolphus G. Belk ◽  
Robert C. Smith ◽  
Sherri L. Wallace

In general, the founders of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists were “movement people.” Powerful agents of socialization such as the uprisings of the 1960s molded them into scholars with tremendous resolve to tackle systemic inequalities in the political science discipline. In forming NCOBPS as an independent organization, many sought to develop a Black perspective in political science to push the boundaries of knowledge and to use that scholarship to ameliorate the adverse conditions confronting Black people in the United States and around the globe. This paper utilizes historical documents, speeches, interviews, and other scholarly works to detail the lasting contributions of the founders and Black political scientists to the discipline, paying particular attention to their scholarship, teaching, mentoring, and civic engagement. It finds that while political science is much improved as a result of their efforts, there is still work to do if their goals are to be achieved.


Author(s):  
Cheryl Teelucksingh

On August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, alt-right/White supremacy groups and Black Lives Matter (BLM) supporters came face-to-face regarding what to do about public monuments that celebrate key figures from slavery and the Jim Crow era. White supremacists and White nationalists did not hide their racist ideologies as they demanded that their privileged place in history not be erased. The BLM movement, which challenges state-sanctioned anti-Black racism, was ready to confront themes of White discontent and reverse racism, critiques of political correctness, and the assumption that racialized people should know their place and be content to be the subordinate other.It is easy to frame the events in Charlottesville as indicative of US-specific race problems. However, a sense that White spaces should prevail and an ongoing history of anti-Black racism are not unique to the United States. The rise of Canadian activism under the BLM banner also signals a movement to change Canadian forms of institutional racism in policing, education, and the labor market. This article responds to perceptions that the BLM movement has given insufficient attention to environmental concerns (Pellow 2016; Halpern 2017). Drawing on critical race theory as a conceptual tool, this article focuses on the Canadian context as part of the author’s argument in favor of greater collaboration between BLM and the environmental justice (EJ) movement in Canada. This article also engages with the common stereotype that Blacks in Canada have it better than Blacks in the United States.


1982 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 109-125
Author(s):  
W F Garber

A review of sludge disposal to sea in North America involves sociological and political as well as technical, scientific or engineering considerations. The review of the interrelationships between these differing types of interests has appeared to be most intense in the United States. Not because of a lesser concern in Canada and Mexico; but because of factors such as the location of most major population centers along the sea coasts, the resulting possibility of environmental problems from waste discharges and the intensity and influence of the environmental movement. From the standpoint of a city or other agency attempting to dispose of solids residual from waste-water treatment in a manner which is both environmentally responsible and economically reasonable, the laws and regulations arising out of the complex of interest cited above pose almost impossible problems. Basic decisions are made by the courts and agency administrators and apply nationwide rather than allowing evaluation of each specific problem. Furthermore, laws applying to air, land and water (sea) pollution conflict so that environmentally responsible solutions become difficult to impossible. Case histories with an outline of the controlling legislation, development of standards and measure of the actual dimensions of such discharge is presented.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Irus Braverman

Our special issue provides a first-of-its kind attempt to examine environmental injustices in the occupied West Bank through interdisciplinary perspectives, pointing to the broader settler colonial and neoliberal contexts within which they occur and to their more-than-human implications. Specifically, we seek to understand what environmental justice—a movement originating from, and rooted in, the United States—means in the context of Palestine/Israel. Moving beyond the settler-native dialectic, we draw attention to the more-than-human flows that occur in the region—which include water, air, waste, cement, trees, donkeys, watermelons, and insects—to consider the dynamic, and often gradational, meanings of frontier, enclosure, and Indigeneity in the West Bank, challenging the all-too-binary assumptions at the core of settler colonialism. Against the backdrop of the settler colonial project of territorial dispossession and elimination, we illuminate the infrastructural connections and disruptions among lives and matter in the West Bank, interpreting these through the lens of environmental justice. We finally ask what forms of ecological decolonization might emerge from this landscape of accumulating waste, concrete, and ruin. Such alternative visions that move beyond the single axis of settler-native enable the emergence of more nuanced, and even hopeful, ecological imaginaries that focus on sumud, dignity, and recognition.


2020 ◽  
pp. 216747952095077
Author(s):  
Evan L. Frederick ◽  
Ann Pegoraro ◽  
Samuel Schmidt

When asked if she would go to the White House if invited, Megan Rapinoe stated, “I’m not going to the fucking White House.” The next morning, President Donald Trump posted a series of tweets in which he criticized Rapinoe’s statements. In his tweets, Trump introduced issues around race in the United States and brought forth his own notion of nationalism. The purpose of this study was to conduct an analysis of users’ tweets to determine how individuals employed Twitter to craft a narrative and discuss the ongoing Rapinoe and Trump feud within and outside the bounds of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and nationalism. An inductive analysis of 16,137 users’ tweets revealed three primary themes: a) Refuse, Refute, & Redirect Racist Rhetoric b) Stand Up vs. Know your Rights, and c) #ShutUpAndBeALeader. Based on the findings of this study, it appears that the dialogue regarding racism in the United States is quickly evolving. Instead of reciting the same refrain (i.e., racism no longer exists and systematic racism is constructed by Black people) seen in previous works, individuals in the current dataset refuted those talking points and clearly labeled the President as a racist. Additionally, though discussions of nationalism were evident in this dataset, the Stand Up vs. Know Your Rights theme was on the periphery in comparison to discussions of race. Perhaps, this indicates that some have grown tired of Trump utilizing nationalism as a means to stoke racism.


2020 ◽  
pp. 001391652094260
Author(s):  
Erin M. Hamilton

This study examines the environmentally responsible behaviors (ERBs) of undergraduates ( n = 575). ERBs were measured in an online survey and the influence of situational context on behavior was explored at two scales: 1) green versus non-green building and 2) building characteristics. The Positive Sustainable Built Environments model was used to analyze three building characteristics: Prime, Permit, and Invite. Prime refers to characteristics that prepare occupants to adopt ERBs via communicating a sustainable ethos or restoring attentional capacity (e.g., use of natural materials and views to nature). Permit refers to features that allow occupants to conserve resources (e.g., operable light switches). Invite pertains to features that explicitly encourage ERBs (e.g., signage prompting occupants to turn off lights). Regression results demonstrated that living in a green building had no significant impact on ERBs. However, the Prime and Invite building characteristics significantly predicted improved Energy, Water, and Materials conservation. Results yield implications for designers seeking to create sustainable buildings that promote ERBs.


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