Seeking environmental justice through the state: Insider allies in U.S. state and federal government agencies

IF 3.4 2区 社会学 Q1 GEOGRAPHY
Jill Lindsey Harrison , Jonathan K. London
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Geographers and political ecologists have demonstrated settler-colonial states’ longstanding key roles in producing environmental injustice through colonialism, racial capitalism, neoliberalism, and other mechanisms. Such studies tend to conclude, implicitly or explicitly, that environmental justice (EJ) movements’ pursuits of more sustainable and just futures must therefore antagonistically confront the state or work beyond it entirely to create alternative futures that do not reinforce state hegemony and violence. However, other scholars in recent years have critiqued such characterizations of the state as unilaterally and fundamentally oppressive, arguing instead that states are terrains of struggle whose contradictory programs and practices reflect not only the interests of capital but also actions of movements. They demonstrate that movements pursuing more just and sustainable futures find purchase working both through and beyond the state. Here, we follow these scholars but depart from them in one respect – namely, they frame movements as pressuring the state only from outside of it. We argue that conceptualizing the state and movements as ontologically overlapping and permeable realms in which some actors move back and forth illuminates additional movement influence on state practice and additional factors that mediate their efforts. We make this case by following a group of U.S. EJ activists who pursue EJ movements’ goals by taking formal positions inside the government agencies they seek to change. We show that they accomplish meaningful change in these roles and that their work is mediated not only by industry power over state agencies, as other scholars have rightly identified, but also by elements of regulatory workplace culture, insider allies’ skills honed in external EJ advocacy, and solidarity among EJ advocates within and beyond the state. By more fully identifying such mediating factors and showing how they shape insider allies’ work, we hope to highlight new fronts of struggle as former EJ movement activists use their insider ally positions to wrest more control over the state from capital and for liberatory ends.

通过国家寻求环境正义:美国州政府和联邦政府机构的内部盟友
地理学家和政治生态学家已经证明,长期以来,定居殖民国家通过殖民主义、种族资本主义、新自由主义和其他机制,在制造环境不公正方面扮演着关键角色。这些研究或明或暗地得出结论,环境正义运动追求更可持续、更公正的未来,因此必须与国家对抗,或完全超越国家,创造不会强化国家霸权和暴力的替代性未来。然而,近年来也有学者批判了这种将国家定性为单方面和根本性压迫的观点,认为国家是斗争的舞台,其相互矛盾的计划和实践不仅反映了资本的利益,也反映了运动的行动。他们证明,追求更公正、更可持续未来的运动在国家内外都能找到工作。在此,我们追随这些学者,但有一点与他们不同--即他们将运动定位于仅从国家外部向国家施压。我们认为,将国家和运动概念化为在本体论上相互重叠且可渗透的领域,一些参与者在其中来回穿梭,这揭示了运动对国家实践的额外影响,以及调解其努力的额外因素。我们通过跟踪一组美国平等司法活动家来证明这一点,这些活动家通过在他们试图改变的政府机构中担任正式职务来实现平等司法运动的目标。我们表明,他们在这些职位上完成了有意义的变革,他们的工作不仅受到其他学者正确指出的行业对国家机构的权力的影响,还受到监管工作场所文化、内部盟友在外部环境正义倡导中磨练的技能以及州内外环境正义倡导者之间的团结等因素的影响。我们希望通过更全面地识别这些中介因素,并展示它们如何影响内部盟友的工作,从而突出前环境正义运动活动家利用其内部盟友的地位从资本手中夺取更多对国家的控制权并实现解放目的的斗争新战线。
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来源期刊
Geoforum
Geoforum GEOGRAPHY-
CiteScore
7.30
自引率
5.70%
发文量
201
期刊介绍: Geoforum is an international, inter-disciplinary journal, global in outlook, and integrative in approach. The broad focus of Geoforum is the organisation of economic, political, social and environmental systems through space and over time. Areas of study range from the analysis of the global political economy and environment, through national systems of regulation and governance, to urban and regional development, local economic and urban planning and resources management. The journal also includes a Critical Review section which features critical assessments of research in all the above areas.
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