scholarly journals Disability, Climate Change, and Environmental Violence: The Politics of Invisibility and the Horizon of Hope

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Watts Belser
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
The Political ◽  
Environmental Damage ◽  
Cultural Patterns ◽  
Disability Theory ◽  
Justice Movements ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Way

This article brings disability theory and activism into conversation with environmental justice, a conversation that has often been stymied by a fundamental difference in approaching disability. Environmental justice movements position disability as a visceral marker of environmental harm, while disability movements claim disability as a site of value and vitality, a position I call "disability embrace." Rather than adjudicate these differences, I use them to pinpoint a barrier to political alliance: environmental disability is a consequence of structural violence. I argue that disability politics offer vital resources for grappling with climate change. Applying insights from disability studies and disability activism to the analysis of environmental damage reveals the political stakes of diagnosis—the way power contours how, when, and to what ends we recognize human and ecological impairment. Disability insights illuminate pervasive cultural patterns of invisibility and climate denial. Disability critiques of futurity and cure can also reconfigure the way we approach hope and help fashion a new narrative of what it might mean to live well in the Anthropocene.

The Biopolitical Logics of Settler Colonialism and Disruptive Relationality

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
René Dietrich
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Way

This essay argues that the biopolitical logics of settler colonialism function according to a naturalization in Western thought of politics as a project of hierarchically ordering life in relation to the sphere of politics. Significantly, such a mode of thinking discredits socio-political orders that operate on the basis of a non-hierarchical place-based relationality of all life forms including the land. Through a reading of Foucault and Agamben in their use of Aristotle, I want to show how hierarchy as a principle of the political is already implemented in the premise they draw upon for analyzing the biopolitical. In the same way it remains unrecognized in their analysis of biopolitics, this principle also becomes operative within settler colonial logics of life and land. Recently, however, Indigenous scholars and writers have mobilized relationality in its formative characteristic for Indigenous polities and politics as strategy to disrupt biopolitical logics and denaturalize settler colonial rule, which I want to show through engaging Daniel Heath Justice’s Indigenous fantasy trilogy The Way of Thorn and Thunder: The Kynship Chronicles as a site of disruptive relationality and political knowledge production.

Building Citizens

2018 ◽  
pp. 60-78
Author(s):  
Erika Lorraine Milam
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Patterns ◽  
The People ◽  
Curriculum Project ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way ◽  
Course Of Study

This chapter explores the research behind Man: A Course of Study (MACOS). It provides insight into why, for the people involved, the curriculum project was so profoundly personal. Many of the researchers and teachers involved in its creation embraced the liberal aspirations of the decade. Anthropology promised a means by which students could come to appreciate the cultural patterns of communities vastly different from their own while recognizing the fundamental equality of all peoples. If education held the key to securing the nation's place in world, they imagined, it would also play a significant role in teaching students how to overcome any racial apprehensions they may have acquired from parents or peers. Making visible the careful labor that went into MACOS's creation at every level reveals the political and personal stakes inherent to the administrative vision, the ethnographic footage, and the finalized classroom booklets and films, where each sought to transform the way students thought about themselves and the society in which they lived.

scholarly journals Environmental Justice and Regional Political Ecology converge in the other California

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan K. London
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Regional Planning ◽  
Climate Change Mitigation ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Climate Change ◽  
Regional Strategies ◽  
Justice Movements ◽  
Change Mitigation

This article illuminates the value of the concept of the region in political ecology and environmental justice studies by presenting three arguments about the role of regions in environmental justice social movements engaged in climate change mitigation in California's San Joaquin Valley. First, regional planning agencies and environmental justice advocates are engaged in conflicts over not only the content of regional climate change plans, but the very definitions of region and the authority used to put these regional visions into action. Second, regional organizing provides environmental justice movements with new opportunities to address regional economic patterns and to negotiate with regional planning agencies, both of which influence local manifestations of environmental injustice. Third, regional strategies raise significant dilemmas for these movements as they try to sustain engagement across extensive spatial territories and engage with a broad set of policy and economic protagonists. Together, this analysis demonstrates that a dynamic approach to regions, regionalism, and regionalization can assist political ecology and environmental justice scholars in their common aim of understanding the co-production of social and environmental inequity and collective action to change it.Key Words: Environmental justice, regional political ecology, climate change mitigation, regional planning, rural community development

scholarly journals A commentary on the carbon footprint of milk formula: harms to planetary health and policy implications

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie P. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Environmental Damage ◽  
Milk Formula ◽  
Public Health Response

Abstract Background Infant formula requires mass production by the dairy industry, with plastic and other waste and degradation of land and waterways. Millions of babies, two thirds globally, now have milk formula, with breastfeeding in dramatic decline in Asia. Economic cost externalities and commercial incentives Economic thinking clarifies that markets are not perfect - price incentives can lead to excessive and inefficient environmental damage. Market prices paid to produce or use a commodity may not reflect its true resource costs. The ongoing global transition in infant and young child feeding (IYCF) toward milk formula use makes urgent the investigation of its environmental costs, including greenhouse gas (GHG) implications. Socially vulnerable populations are also particularly exposed to climate change risks, but have the least voice and agency. The important role of public health advocacy Few question the scale of the baby food industry, especially in major food exporting countries. Breastfeeding advocacy non-government organisations have led the investigations, and exposed the inequitable vulnerabilities. A ground-breaking study in 2016 showed emissions from just six Asia Pacific countries were equivalent to 6 billion miles of car travel. Each kilogram (kg) of milk formula generated 4 kg of (carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent) greenhouse gas during production. Much of this was from unnecessary toddler formula. Recent research reveals that if looking at the full product lifecycle, including consumer use, GHG emissions per kg are actually three times higher than these pioneering estimates. Environment and health harms combined with economic evidence highlight the place for a strong public health response on this issue. Conclusion Formula feeding is a maladaptive practice in the face of contemporary global environmental and population health challenges. Breastfeeding protection, support and promotion helps to safeguard planetary and human health by minimising environmental harm. It is a beneficial response to concerns about disease burdens and climate change. Breastfeeding populations are more resilient in emergencies. Effective and cost-effective policies and interventions exist for increasing breastfeeding and reducing unnecessary use of formula. Implementing such measures presents a rare opportunity to both reduce the greenhouse gas problem and improve human nutrition, health, and health equity.

Leone de' Sommi and Jewish Theatre in Renaissance Mantua

2009 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-19
Author(s):  
Donald Beecher
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Social Negotiations ◽  
Renaissance Artist ◽  
The Way

This is a study of a Renaissance artist and his patrons, but with an added complication, insofar as Leone de' Sommi, the gifted academician and playwright in the employ of the dukes of Mantua in the second half of the sixteenth century, was Jewish and a lifelong promoter and protector of his community. The article deals with the complex relationship between the court and the Jewish "università" concerning the drama and the way in which dramatic performances also became part of the political, judicial and social negotiations between the two parties, as well as a study of Leone's role as playwright and negotiator during a period that was arguably one of the best of times for the Jews of Mantua.

“I'd make thee eat the mischief thou hast vented”: Discourse of Law in Ben Jonson's Catiline His Conspiracy

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-45
Author(s):  
Akihiko Shimizu
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Gunpowder Plot ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
Legal Procedures ◽  
The Way

This essay explores the discourse of law that constitutes the controversial apprehension of Cicero's issuing of the ultimate decree of the Senate (senatus consultum ultimum) in Catiline. The play juxtaposes the struggle of Cicero, whose moral character and legitimacy are at stake in regards to the extra-legal uses of espionage, with the supposedly mischievous Catilinarians who appear to observe legal procedures more carefully throughout their plot. To mitigate this ambivalence, the play defends Cicero's actions by depicting the way in which Cicero establishes the rhetoric of public counsel to convince the citizens of his legitimacy in his unprecedented dealing with Catiline. To understand the contemporaneousness of Catiline, I will explore the way the play integrates the early modern discourses of counsel and the legal maxim of ‘better to suffer an inconvenience than mischief,’ suggesting Jonson's subtle sensibility towards King James's legal reformation which aimed to establish and deploy monarchical authority in the state of emergency (such as the Gunpowder Plot of 1605). The play's climactic trial scene highlights the display of the collected evidence, such as hand-written letters and the testimonies obtained through Cicero's spies, the Allbroges, as proof of Catiline's mischievous character. I argue that the tactical negotiating skills of the virtuous and vicious characters rely heavily on the effective use of rhetoric exemplified by both the political discourse of classical Rome and the legal discourse of Tudor and Jacobean England.

Site, Adapt, Perform: A Practice-as-Research Confrontation with Climate Change

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Kloetzel
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Creative Process ◽  
Adaptive Performance ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Research Methodologies ◽  
Arts Festivals ◽  
A Site

In recent years, arts festivals around the globe have become enamoured of touring, site-based performance. Such serialised site work is growing in popularity due to its accessibility, its spectacular characteristics, and its adaptive qualities. Employing practice-as-research methodologies to dissect the basis of such site-adaptive performances, the author highlights her discovery of the crumbling foundation of the adaptation discourse by way of her creative process for the performance work Room. Combining findings from the phenomenological explorations of her dancing body as well as from cultural analyses of the climate change debate by Dipesh Chakrabarty (2009), Claire Colebrook (2011, 2012), and Bruno Latour (2014), the author argues that only by fundamentally shifting the direction of the adaptation discourse – on scales from global to the personal – will we be able to build a site-adaptive performance strategy that resists the neoliberal drive towards ecological and economic precarity.

The Political Theology of Schelling

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saitya Brata Das
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Franz Rosenzweig ◽  
Political Works ◽  
The Way

This book rigorously examines the theologico-political works of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, setting his thought against Hegel's and showing how he prepared the way for the post-metaphysical philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig and Jacques Derrida.

The Star and the Stripes

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael N. Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
American Jews ◽  
Peace And Justice ◽  
The World ◽  
Policy Beliefs ◽  
Justice Movements

How do American Jews envision their role in the world? Are they tribal—a people whose obligations extend solely to their own? Or are they prophetic—a light unto nations, working to repair the world? This book is an interpretation of the effects of these worldviews on the foreign policy beliefs of American Jews since the nineteenth century. The book argues that it all begins with the political identity of American Jews. As Jews, they are committed to their people's survival. As Americans, they identify with, and believe their survival depends on, the American principles of liberalism, religious freedom, and pluralism. This identity and search for inclusion form a political theology of prophetic Judaism that emphasizes the historic mission of Jews to help create a world of peace and justice. The political theology of prophetic Judaism accounts for two enduring features of the foreign policy beliefs of American Jews. They exhibit a cosmopolitan sensibility, advocating on behalf of human rights, humanitarianism, and international law and organizations. They also are suspicious of nationalism—including their own. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that American Jews are natural-born Jewish nationalists, the book charts a long history of ambivalence; this ambivalence connects their early rejection of Zionism with the current debate regarding their attachment to Israel. And, the book contends, this growing ambivalence also explains the rising popularity of humanitarian and social justice movements among American Jews.

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