Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Sharon D. Welch
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
African American ◽  
Native American ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Police Force ◽  
Social Health ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Large Numbers

There are moments in history when there are major breakthroughs in the power of social movements. Large numbers of people recognize the depth of injustice, see possibilities of beauty and integrity heretofore unknown, and find new forms of coming together to bring about change. We are living in such a time. We also live in a time of genuine threat – rising authoritarianism, racism, and xenophobia, increasing environmental degradation, morally unconscionable income and wealth disparities, a dangerously militarized police force, and a criminal justice system that disproportionately targets people who are African American, Native American and Latinx. Moreover, we are confronting ongoing threats of war and terrorism, escalating Islamophobia, and a national political system that is largely ineffective, paralyzed by increasingly high levels of division and polarization. We are in a struggle for the very soul of democracy, and all that we hold dear - interdependence, reason, compassion, respect for all human beings, and stewardship of the natural world that sustains us,– is under direct, unabashed assault. This book is meant for those who are concerned about dangers to our democracy, and to our social health as a nation. It is for those who desire to work for social justice, and to respond to essential protests by enacting progressive change.

Nature and Religion in America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brett Grainger
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
English Language ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
North American Continent ◽  
The North ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Complex Words

One of the most complex words in the English language, “nature” (sometimes personified as “Nature” or “Mother Nature”) has been central to developments in American religions. Despite their different origins, the three cosmologies present on the North American continent during the early modern “age of contact”—Native American, African American, and Euro-American—shared a number of similarities, including the belief in an enchanted or animate cosmos, the ambivalence of sacred presences manifested in nature, and the use of myth and ritual to manage these ambivalent presences in ways that secured material and spiritual benefits for individuals or communities. Through encounters on colonial borderlands and through developments in society and culture (in science, economics, politics, etc.), these cosmologies have been adapted, developed, and combined in creative ways to produce new forms of religious life. These developments have been characterized by a series of recurrent tensions, including the notion of divine or spiritual realities as being transcendent or immanent, organicism or mechanism, and of the natural world as including or excluding human beings. Organicist and animist cosmologies, severely challenged by the early modern scientific revolution, were resurgent in the antebellum period, fueling a series of new religious developments, from Transcendentalism and revivalism to Mormonism and the early environmentalist movement. These generative tensions continue to reverberate into the modern day, in part as an outworking of the environmental crisis of the 1960s, which saw a purported “greening” of established religions as well as the rise of new forms of nature spirituality.

scholarly journals “Breathing the Air of a World So New”: Rewriting the Landscape of America in Toni Morrison's A Mercy

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENNIFER TERRY
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Native American ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
New World ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Song Of Solomon ◽  
Dominant Discourses

This article explores Toni Morrison's preoccupation with, and reimagining of, the landscape of the so-called New World. Drawing on scholarship that has investigated dominant discourses about freedom, bounty, and possibility located within the Americas, it identifies various counternarratives in Morrison's fiction, tracing these through the earlier Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), and Beloved (1987), but primarily arguing for their centrality to A Mercy (2008). The mapping of seventeenth-century North America in the author's ninth novel both exposes colonial relations to place and probes African American experiences of the natural world. In particular, A Mercy is found to recalibrate definitions of “wilderness” with a sharpened sensitivity to the position of women and the racially othered within them. The dynamic between the perspectives towards the environment of Anglo-Dutch farmer and trader Jacob Vaark and Native American orphan and servant Lina, is examined, as well as the slave girl Florens's formative encounters in American space. Bringing together diverse narrative views, A Mercy is shown to trouble hegemonic settler and masculinist notions of the New World and, especially through Florens's voicing, shape an alternative engagement with landscape. The article goes some way towards meeting recent calls for attention to the intersections between postcolonial approaches and ecocriticism.

scholarly journals Addressing Official Misconduct

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 270-290
Author(s):  
Clayton B. Drummond ◽  
Mai Naito Mills
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
African American ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
National Registry ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Police Accountability ◽  
Legal Defense ◽  
Criminal Justice Professionals

Currently, the National Registry of Exonerations (NRE) states that official misconduct has been a contributing factor in 1,404 of 2,601 exonerations. The term “official” includes criminal justice professionals such as prosecutors, judicial officials, and law enforcement. Analyzing official misconduct and inadequate legal defense cases in the NRE, the goal of this article is to identify (1) officials who commit misconduct in murder exonerations, (2) types of misconduct conducted, and (3) impact on race of the exoneree. The findings of the study indicated that police and prosecutors committed more acts of misconduct than the number of exonerees included in the study. Additionally, African American exonerees were found to be disproportionately victimized by official misconduct. Policy implications and future research provide insight on how the findings reinforce calls for social justice and police accountability in wake of the killing of George Floyd and the shooting of Jacob Blake.

scholarly journals Conserving Natural Values to Mitigate Environmental Degradation in Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-90
Author(s):  
Mark Omorovie Ikeke
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Anthropogenic Activities ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Ocean Pollution ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Food Shortages

One of the gravest predicaments that Africa is suffering from is environmental degradation. Environmental degradation implies the diminishment of the beauty, quality, goodness, and viability of the earth and its ecosystems. Environmental degradation is precipitated by massive deforestation, desertification, drought, forced migration, war, food shortages, atmospheric and ocean pollution from mining and exploitation of natural resources, human insecurities, misappropriation of environmental funds, global warming and climate change, etc. Many of these that lead to environmental degradation are anthropogenic (caused by human activities and behaviours). Anthropogenic activities that degrade the environment are often informed by systems of thoughts that see no intrinsic value in nature or the earth. Nature is simply seen for its utilitarian and human satisfaction purpose. The earth is simply seen as existing for human needs and purpose. Nature exists to benefits human beings. Humans are at liberty to use the earth as they desire. Other organisms have no purpose except for the good and welfare of human beings. The interests of other non-human realities do not count. This paper argues that there are values in the natural world. Beyond the benefits that nature provides for humans and the entire ecosystem, nature has intrinsic value. While humans are to make use of nature to sustain themselves like other organisms in nature, humans have a responsibility to conserve the intrinsic values in nature. The degradation and deterioration of nature takes from it religious, spiritual, aesthetic, intrinsic, ecosystemic, and other values in nature. The paper will use a critical analytic and hermeneutic method to traces various theorists on the value of nature. It will examine the situation and reality of environmental degradation. It will equally present what can be done to conserve natural values. The paper finds and concludes that conserving natural values will help to mitigate environmental degradation

Impact of Environmental Degradation on Human Health

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
_______ Archana ◽  
Charu Datta ◽  
Pratibha Tiwari
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Human Population ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
Population Increase ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The People ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Economic Institute ◽  
Day By Day

Degradation of environment is one of the most serious challenges before the mankind in today’s world. Mankind has been facing a wide range of problem arising out of the degradation of environment. Not only the areas under human inhabitation, but the areas of the planet without human population have also been suffering from these problems. As the population increase day by day, the amenities are not improved simultaneously. With the advancement of science and technologies the needs of human beings has been changing rapidly. As a result different types of environmental problems have been rising. Environmental degradation is a wide- reaching problem and it is likely to influence the health of human population is great. It may be defined the deterioration of the environment through depletion of resources such as air, water, and soil. The destruction of ecosystem and extinction of wildlife. Environmental degradation has occurred due to the recent activities in the field of socio-economic, institute and technology. Poverty still remains a problem as the root of several environmental problems to create awareness among the people about the ill effect of environmental pollution. In the whole research it is clear that all factors of environmental degradation may be reduced through- Framing the new laws on environmental degradation, Environment friend policy, Controlling all the ways and means of noise, air, soil and water pollution, Through growing more and more trees and by adapting the proper sanitation policy.  

The Measure of Greatness

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Nature ◽  
Complex Trajectory ◽  
The Many ◽  
Human Excellence ◽  
Ethical Perspectives

Magnanimity is a virtue that has led many lives. Foregrounded early on by Plato as the philosophical virtue par excellence, it became one of the crown jewels in Aristotle’s account of human excellence and was accorded an equally salient place by other ancient thinkers. One of the most distinctive elements of the ancient tradition to filter into the medieval Islamic and Christian worlds, it sparked important intellectual engagements there and went on to carve deep tracks through several later philosophies that inherited from this tradition. Under changing names, under reworked forms, it continued to breathe in the thought of Descartes and Hume, Kant and Nietzsche, and their successors. Its many lives have been joined by important continuities. Yet they have also been fragmented by discontinuities—discontinuities reflecting larger shifts in ethical perspectives and competing answers to questions about the nature of the good life, the moral nature of human beings, and their relationship to the social and natural world they inhabit. They have also been punctuated by moments of controversy in which the greatness of this vision of human greatness has itself been called into doubt. This volume provides a window to the complex trajectory of a virtue whose glitter has at times been as heady as it has been divisive. By exploring the many lives it has lived, we will be in a better position to decide whether and why this is a virtue we might still want to make central to our own ethical lives.

Anti-Black Racism and Historical Trauma: Pushing the Positive Youth Development Paradigm

2021 ◽  
pp. 0044118X2110078
Author(s):  
Anna Ortega-Williams ◽  
Troy Harden
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
African American ◽  
Prosocial Behavior ◽  
Youth Development ◽  
Positive Youth Development ◽  
African American Youth ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Youth Work ◽  
Developmental Needs ◽  
Development Paradigm

Positive youth development (PYD), while embraced in many sectors of youth work, has faced criticism for its primary emphasis on positive personal change and adaptation, without a strong emphasis on social justice and culture, especially relevant for African Americans. Additional models of PYD addressing these conceptual gaps have emerged, however few explicitly address anti-Black racism and historical trauma impacting African American youth development. In this paper, expanded models of PYD, specifically Empowerment-Based Positive Youth Development (EBPYD) and Critical Positive Youth Development (CPYD) will be examined for their strengths and limitations in responding to (1) anti-Black racism and (2) historical trauma among African American youth. Key strategies of these models, such as promoting prosocial behavior and civic engagement will be reconceptualized and expanded to account for developmental needs imposed by historical oppression and contemporary racism against African American youth. Implications for PYD programing will be discussed.

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