Green Criminology and Social Justice: A Reexamination of the Lynemouth Plant Closing and the Political Economic Causes of Environmental and Social Injustice

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Normal Operation ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Green Criminology ◽  
Plant Closing ◽  
Developed Economies ◽  
Plant Closure ◽  
Plant Closures ◽  
The Aluminum Industry ◽  
Political Economic

Pamela Ann Davies argues that the closure of the Lynemouth, UK, aluminum smelter generated adverse social justice impacts and was caused by the adoption of green state policies. She employs that argument to critique green criminology for promoting adverse social justice impacts. Here, we reanalyze the Lynemouth plant closure. First, this reanalysis illustrates the various social and environmental forms of injustice the plant generated, especially its adverse human, nonhuman and ecological health consequences. Second, the closure is reassessed from a political economic perspective that places the plant closure within the context of global capitalist plant closures in the aluminum industry. That review notes that plant closures and deindustrialization in developed economies are now a common occurrence driven by economic concerns, not environmental policies. We point out that social injustice as well as ecological destruction are often created by the normal operation of capitalism, and that those consequences should not be overlooked.

Retheorising the relationship between electricity scarcity and social injustice: evidence from Zimbabwe

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-118
Author(s):  
Ellen Fungisai Chipango
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Energy Poverty ◽  
Economic Reality ◽  
Market Trends ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The Relationship

Despite the pervasive social scarcity of electricity in Zimbabwe, there is little understanding of this phenomenon, especially how it abrogates social justice. With a view to debunking the natural inevitability of electricity scarcity, the article argues that in an energy sector driven by neoliberal tendencies, capital accumulation is not challenged. Hence electricity scarcity is erroneously considered inevitable. Drawing on qualitative research, the fundamental argument advanced in this article is that structural factors such as the market trends produce and reproduce electricity social scarcity, which in turn perpetuates social injustice because electricity is a sine qua non of human development. Coincidentally, this work also reveals that neoliberalism is not only an ideological rhetoric embedded in political-economic reality, but rather its discourse produces prudent subjects who are loyal to it and prepared to endure the effects of energy poverty. Accordingly, the paper raises some critical challenges for policymakers as it has both political-economic and social justice implications, insisting that electricity availability does not mean access to all ‐ scarcity can be experienced even when the resource is in abundance.

Enhancing racial equity in LIS research by increasing representation of BIPOC

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-256
Author(s):  
Charles R. Senteio ◽  
Kaitlin E. Montague ◽  
Bettina Campbell ◽  
Terrance R. Campbell ◽  
Samantha Seigerman
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Participatory Research ◽  
Community Based Participatory Research ◽  
Health Inequity ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Racial Equity ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Community Partners ◽  
Racial Injustice

The escalation of discourse on racial injustice prompts novel ideas to address the persistent lack of racial equity in LIS research. The underrepresentation of BIPOC perspectives contributes to the inequity. Applying the Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach meaningfully engages BIPOC to help guide LIS investigations that identify evolving needs and concerns, such as how systematic racism may contribute to social justice issues like environmental and health inequity. Engaging with BIPOC, using the CBPR approach, can help address racial equity in LIS because it will result in increased racial representation which enables incorporation of the perspectives and priorities of BIPOC. This shift to greater engagement is imperative to respond to escalating attention to social injustice and ensure that these central issues are adequately reflected in LIS research. The discipline is positioned to help detail the drivers and implications of inequity and develop ways to address them. We underscore the importance of working across research disciplines by describing our CBPR experience engaging with BIPOC in LIS research. We highlight the perspectives of community partners who have over two decades of experience with community-based LIS research. We offer lessons learned to LIS researchers by describing the factors that make these initiatives successful and those which contribute to setbacks.

scholarly journals Narrating technonatures: discourses of biotechnology in a neoliberal era

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 186
Author(s):  
Myles Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Political ◽  
Effective Strategy ◽  
Economic Implications ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Status ◽  
Political Economic

This article considers the role played by discourses of nature in structuring the cultural politics of anti-GMO activism. It argues that such discourses have been successful rhetorical tools for activists because they mobilize widely resonant nature-culture dualisms that separate the natural and human worlds. However, these discourses hold dubious political implications. In valorizing the natural as a source of essential truth, natural purity discourses fail to challenge how naturalizations have been used to legitimize sexist, racist and colonial systems of injustice and oppression. Rather, they revitalize the discursive purchase of appeals to nature as a justification for the status quo, indirectly reinforcing existing power relations. Moreover, these discourses fail to challenge the critical though contingent reality of GMOs' location within the wider framework of neoliberal social relations. Fortunately, appeals to natural purity have not been the only effective strategy for opposing GMOs. Activist campaigns that directly target the political economic implications of GMOs within the context of neoliberalism have also had successes without resorting to appeals to the purity of nature. The successes of these campaigns suggest that while nature-culture dualisms remain politically effective normative groundings, concerns over equity, farmers' rights, and democracy retain potential as ideological terrains in the struggle for social justice.

scholarly journals Social exclusion: re-examining its conceptual relevance to tackling inequality and social injustice

2015 ◽  
Vol 35 (9/10) ◽  
pp. 600-617 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clive Sealey
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Content Type ◽  
It Value ◽  
Significant Difference

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to rationalise the continued conceptual utility of social exclusion, and in so doing addresses the prevailing question of what to do with it. This is relevant from social exclusion’s declining relevance in contemporary UK social policy and academia, where its consideration as a concept to explain disadvantage is being usurped by other concepts, both old and new. Design/methodology/approach – The paper analyses criticisms of limitations of social exclusion which have typically centred on the operationalisation of the concept, but the author will argue that there are distinctive operationalisation and conceptual strengths within social exclusion which make it value-added as a concept to explain disadvantage. Specifically, there will be an analysis of both New Labour’s and the present Coalition government’s conceptualisation of the term in policy in relation to work. Findings – The analysis highlights the significant difference that a focus on processes rather than outcomes of social exclusion can make to our understanding of inequality and social injustice, and locates this difference within an argument that social exclusion’s true applied capabilities for social justice requires a shift to a conceptualisation built on the processes that cause it in the first place. Originality/value – The paper acts as a rejoinder to prevailing theoretical and political thinking of the limited and diminishing value of social exclusion for tackling disadvantage. In particular, the paper shows how social exclusion can be conceptualised to provide a critical approach to tackling inequality and social injustice, and in doing so foregrounds the truly applied capabilities of social exclusion for transforming social justice.

scholarly journals Eroded Rule of Law, Endemic Violence and Social Injustice in Brazil

Lexonomica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-242
Author(s):  
Mitja Kovač ◽  
Marcela Neves Bezerra
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Crime Rate ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Prison System ◽  
Living Conditions ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Short Term ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Weak Rule

Modern Brazil is plagued by social and economic inequalities, endemic violence, crime, and a weak rule of law. Once these narratives become dependent on each other, all aspects must be worked on to change the scenario the country is facing: insecurity, fear and a lack of opportunities. This paper argues that the unprecedented rise of social injustice in Brazil is not the result of short-term measures but is part of its history marked by economic and social inequalities extending from its colonial past until today and the deficient policies on crime that emerged in the mid-1990s. Moreover, the current massive incarceration, overcrowding of prisons combined with the absence of human living conditions is turning the prison system in Brazil into a gigantic, perpetual school of crime. Investment in education that directly helps to lower the crime rate must be aligned with a new, less repressive and more inclusive punitive policy so as to induce criminals not to return to their unlawful ways. It is suggested that Brazil can only properly develop if efficient legal institutions, the rule of law, and criminal sanctioning based on the principles of social justice are available to all citizens.

scholarly journals Social Justice and Disabled People: Principles and Challenges

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robina Goodlad ◽  
Sheila Riddell
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Alternative Conceptions ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Labour Government ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Uk

Social justice is a policy aim of the UK Labour government. This paper considers the applicability of the concept to disability, seeking to establish principles for conceptualising social justice and disability and considering the nature of the challenges for public policy and society posed by this conceptualisation. The paper considers how disability is implicated in two types of claims about the source of social injustice: those concerned with socially constructed differences between people; and those arising from material inequalities. Appropriate values underpinning alternative conceptions of social justice are discussed and tensions in policymaking considered.

Marxist geography: A personal journey

2021 ◽  
pp. 194277862110494
Author(s):  
Waquar Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Communist Manifesto ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Jawaharlal Nehru

I am fascinated by Marx’s openness to learning and engagement with diverse intellectual traditions—political economic, German and Greek philosophy, utopian socialist tradition, and English literature to name a few. Marxism for me, hence, is engagement and conversations with eclectic ideas, with fidelity to the communist manifesto, and in turn, its commitment to equality and justice. In this paper, while highlighting my own journey as a student of Marx’s scholarship, I examine the key role hegemony plays in our society. Formal education, I argue, is hegemonic to the extent that it is geared at producing docile individuals, particularly from oppressed sections of the society, that internalize theories and concepts favorable to elites: it should not surprise us when the oppressed act or vote against their own interest. Yet some centers of learning are also epicenters of counter-hegemonic praxis—one such place is Jawaharlal Nehru University where I unlearn and re-learned my Marxism and began my journey as a Marxist geographer. Additionally, I examine the role of “vulgar Marxism” (unwillingness to engage with contemporary geographically specific challenges) that is often passed off as Marxist orthodoxy and argue that this has been a real threat to the spirit of the Communist Manifesto. I examine the decline of the Communist Party in Bengal in India to highlight how vulgar Marxism can subvert social justice and make the “Communist Party” unpopular.

The Impact of Social Injustice on Public Health

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-20
Author(s):  
Barry S. Levy
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Equal Opportunity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Adverse Health Effects ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Adverse Health ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Social injustice creates conditions that adversely affect the health of individuals and communities. It denies individuals and groups equal opportunity to have their basic human needs met. It violates fundamental human rights. It represents a lack of fairness or equity. This chapter provides two broad definitions of social injustice. It gives examples of social injustice, both within the United States and internationally. It describes adverse health effects related to social injustice. And it outlines ways in which health professionals and others can work to minimize social injustice and its adverse health consequences. Text boxes describe concepts of social justice, as well as the relationship between science and social justice. The Appendix to the chapter contains the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

All You Need Is Tea

2020 ◽  
pp. 90-122
Author(s):  
Catherine E. Herrold
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Reform Initiatives ◽  
Philanthropic Foundations ◽  
Local Organizations ◽  
Democracy Building ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Development Ngos

Chapter 4 presents the democracy building strategies of Egypt’s philanthropic foundations and development NGOs. Amidst widespread government repression of civil society and heightened suspicion of Western efforts to promote democracy, local organizations stepped in. They harnessed citizens’ desires to take part in Egypt’s trajectory and positioned themselves as facilitators of citizen-led initiatives. Instead of creating and imposing their own reform initiatives, Egyptian foundations and development NGOs worked closely with grassroots communities to cultivate democracy on their terms. Egyptians wanted political, economic, and social justice, not necessarily a Western-style democracy. The approach taken by local groups both respected grassroots priorities and cultures and allowed the organizations to evade government crackdowns.

scholarly journals Can Social Justice Live in a House of Structural Racism? A Question for the Field of Evaluation

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leon D. Caldwell ◽  
Katrina L. Bledsoe
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Behavior Modification ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Evaluation Practice ◽  
Learned Behaviors ◽  
The Status ◽  
Professional Evaluation

This article questions whether social justice can live within the structural racism present in the field of evaluation. Structural racism refers to the totality of ways in which societies foster racial discrimination through mutually reinforcing systems of housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, health care, and criminal justice. In order for social justice to be a professional standard of evaluation, the field must recognize, identify, and modify persistent learned behaviors associated with structural racism. We assert that all evaluators, regardless of demographic designation, are subject to perpetuating structural and institutional racism, found in the history and systems of the profession, by tacitly accepting the status quo norms of evaluation practice. Current norms, policies, and practices compromise the normalization of social justice in evaluation. Evaluators sanctioned and reinforced by their professional association, the American Evaluation Association, have the power to modify behaviors of evaluators that perpetuate social injustice in the discipline and field of professional evaluation. We highlight pioneering literature that intellectually protest and position paradigm shifts for equity. We acknowledge the presence of racial and ethnic colleagues, and professional statements about social justice as confrontations to structural racism found in the history and systems of the evaluation field. Finally, we propose a framework for professional behavior modification as a strategy for the extinction of structural racism in evaluation and assert that social justice can only be realized when structural racism is eradicated.

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