Environmental Justice, Political Agenda Setting, and the Myths of History

2000 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin V. Melosi

The emergence of the environmental justice movement in the 1980s has stimulated much debate on the extent to which race and class have been or should become central concerns of modern environmentalism. Leaders in the environmental justice movement have charged that mainstream environmental organizations and, in turn, environmental policy have demonstrated a greater concern for preserving wilderness and animal habitats than addressing health hazards of humans, especially those living in cities; have embraced a “Save the Earth” perspective at the expense of saving people's lives and protecting their homes and backyards. Some advocates of environmental justice have gone so far as to dissociate their movement from American environmentalism altogether, rather identifying with a broader social justice heritage as imbedded in civil rights activities of the 1950s and 1960s.

Author(s):  
John Sullivan ◽  
Katelyn Parady

Reverend James Black and his daughter, Joi Black-Tate, are key members of the Center for Environmental and Economic Justice team that served as a community hub for risk dissemination and clinical cohort management during the Gulf Coast Health Alliance: Health risks related to the Macondo Spill effort to characterize risk from the Deepwater Horizon well explosion and crude oil spill. In this interview, Reverend James Black and Ms. Black-Tate discuss how their community in Biloxi, Mississippi, was impacted by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and connect this catastrophe to their previous experiences with collaborative Environmental Protection Agency projects measuring dioxin in “Back Bay Biloxi” and toxic chemical seepage from the Keesler Air Force Base. They elaborate on why they view their organization’s commitment to environmental justice as a natural outgrowth of the struggle for African-American civil rights and social justice in Mississippi and share reflections on the spiritual core of their relationship to community, social change, health, and the natural world.


Author(s):  
Anne Gessler

Cooperatives in New Orleans: Collective Action and Urban Development intervenes in southern labor, civil rights, and social movement histories to counter the misconception that cooperatives are merely proto-political entities serving as training grounds for or as ancillary to institutionalized social justice movements critiquing capitalism and its fraught connections to gender, race, and class. To historically and theoretically anchor the book, the book examines seven neighborhood cooperatives, spanning from the 1890s to the present, whose alliances with union, consumer, and social justice activists animated successive generations of locally-informed, regional cooperative networks stimulating urban growth in New Orleans. Debating alternative forms of social organization within the city’s plethora of integrated spaces, women, people of color, and laborers blended neighborhood-based African, Caribbean, and European communal traditions with transnational cooperative principles to democratize exploitative systems of consumption, production, and exchange. From utopian socialist workers unions and Rochdale grocery stores to black liberationist theater collectives and community gardens, their cooperative businesses integrated marginalized residents into democratic governance while equally distributing profits among members.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-226
Author(s):  
Soner Tauscher

Avrupa ülkelerinin alışık olduğu düzenli işçi göçü ve kontrollü sığınmacı alımı Suriye iç savaşının üst düzeye ulaştığı 2013/2014 yılından itibaren önemli bir değişim göstermektedir. Avrupa Birliği, kuruluşundan bu yana en yoğun mülteci göçüyle karşılaşmaktadır. Yaşanan bu kontrolsüz ve zorunlu göçe Avrupa toplumları ve devletleri hazırlıksız yakalanmıştır. Mülteci krizini ekonomik olarak fırsata çevirmek isteyen Almanya ise göçmenler için 2015 yazından itibaren açık kapı politikası uygulamaya başlamıştır. Ancak uygulanan açık kapı politikası Alman toplumunun azımsanmayacak bir kesiminde mültecilere ve Müslümanlara yönelik ağır ve şiddetli bir karşı kampanya ortaya çıkardı. Mülteciler ve Müslümanlar aşırı sağ toplumsal hareketlerin gösterilerinde “tecavüzcü”, “işgalci”, “kriminal dolandırıcılar” vb. sıfatlar ile birlikte anılmakta, medya da bu söylemlerin taşıyıcılığını yaparak kamusallaşmasını sağlamaktadır. Böylece aşırı sağı desteklemeyen, apolitik, ya da sığınmacılara karşı hoşgörülü davranan toplum kesimlerinde kamuoyu oluşturularak sığınmacı ve göçmenlere karşı olumsuz algı gündemde tutulmakta, politik olanın merkezine yerleştirilmektedir. Bu çalışmada öncelikle göçmenlere karşı aşırı sağ toplumsal hareketlerin oluşturduğu olumsuz söylemin McCombs ve Shaw’un Gündem Belirleme Kuramı (Agenda Setting Function) bağlamında medya tarafından siyasetin merkezine nasıl oturtulduğu tartışılacaktır. Ayrıca gündemde tutulan mültecilere yönelik olumsuz söylemin gerçeği yansıtıp yansıtmadığı, göçmenlerin ve sığınmacıların biyolojik Almanlardan daha çok suça meyilli olup olmadığı oluşturulan soyut söylemlerden ziyade Almanya İçişleri Bakanlığı’nın yıllık olarak yayınladığı Emniyet Suç İstatistikleri temel alınarak incelenecektir.ABSTRACT IN ENGLISHFar right movements in Germany and evaluation of media discourse of criminal immigrant in the light of official documentsFlows of regular worker migration and regular asylum seekers, of whom European countries are familiar, have significantly changed since 2013/2014 when the civil war of Syria reached its peak. The European Union face probably the most intensive refugee migration since its establishment. European societies and states have not been prepared for this uncontrolled and compulsory immigration. Germany seem to want to turn the refugee crisis into an economic opportunity as evident in their open door policy since the summer of 2015. However, implementation of open-door policy has led a substantial part of German society to a strong campaign against the refugees and Muslims. Refugees and Muslims are referred to as “rapists”, “invaders”, “criminal fraudsters”, and so on in demonstrations of far right movements and media has helped disseminating these discourses. Hence, this manipulated and hateful discourse tries to gain support from the segment of society wh normally does not support far right and often apolitical, or tolerant towards asylum seekers. In this study, the ways in which the negative discourse of far right social movements against immigrants is brought to the centre of the political agenda by media is analysed using the agenda setting framework by McCombs and Shaw. Then, the claims that immigrants are involved in crime, or they are prone to be criminals are analysed and contrasted with the data obtained from the annual Crime and Safety Reports of the German Ministry of the Interior.


Author(s):  
R.V. Vaidyanatha Ayyar

This chapter describes the personality and politics of Arjun Singh who was Minister of MHRD for about nine years in two spells (1991–95 and 2004–9), and left a deep imprint on Indian education policies. It also describes the developments during 1991–6, a watershed in Indian economic and political history which among others marked the end of Nehruvian era and the unquestioned sway of hegemony of the liberal-left ideas about nationalism, identity, and secularism which were regnant from Independence. It outlines how Arjun Singh built his political career around a fiery commitment to secularism, leftist economic ideology, and social justice, and how that commitment served him well in his battles with political rivals including the Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao. It also outlines Arjun Singh’s strategic use of MHRD to cultivate ‘progressive’ intellectuals, and further his political agenda. It elaborates the conceptual underpinnings of the perennial controversy about school history books, and offers a blow by blow account of the controversy during period 1967–1996 which includes the reign of Indira Gandhi, Janata Party, and P.V. Narasimha Rao.


2021 ◽  
pp. 074171362110053
Author(s):  
Tracey Ollis

This case study research examines informal adult learning in the Lock the Gate Alliance, a campaign against mining for coal seam gas in Central Gippsland, Australia. In the field of the campaign, circumstantial activists learn to think critically about the environment, they learn informally and incidentally, through socialization with experienced activists from and through nonformal workshops provided by the Environmental Nongovernment Organization Friends of the Earth. This article uses Bourdieu’s “theory of practice,” to explore the mobilization of activists within the Lock the Gate Alliance field and the practices which generate knowledge and facilitate adult learning. These practices have enabled a diverse movement to educate the public and citizenry about the serious threat fracking poses to the environment, to their land and water supply. The movements successful practices have won a landmark moratorium on fracking for coal seam gas in the State of Victoria.


1985 ◽  
Vol 100 (2) ◽  
pp. 331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Armstrong ◽  
Barbara J. Nelson

Author(s):  
Kemi Fuentes-George

Although the terms “environmental justice” and “environmental racism” emerged due to race-based mobilization in the United States, justice is a constant feature of environmental struggles around the world. Pursuing social justice in environmental advocacy can be difficult, but case studies of activism in places including New Zealand, Mexico, Jamaica, Brazil, and the United States show that it is possible. Environmental injustice emerges when populations that are already politically and socioeconomically marginalized disproportionately bear the costs of environmental consumption, and they are often systematically excluded from the benefits of this consumption. Although different political systems vary in how they structure marginalization, this close association of social injustice with environmental injustice characterizes cases like fossil fuel extraction in industrialized countries and agricultural development in the Global South alike. While skeptics have argued that promoting environmentalism is counterproductive to social justice, because environmental regulations often constrain economic growth, combining the two can lead to more sustainable environmental practices.


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