{"title":"Environmental concern in a Wyoming coal town: contentious environmental problems in rural communities","authors":"Dawn M. Harfmann","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.1913021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.1913021","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Understanding environmental concern in rural resource extraction communities is essential for identifying opportunities for locally relevant pro-environmental action and coalition-building. Interviews with miners and community members in a Wyoming coal community reveal strong stewardship values among other environmental concerns. Mine company discourse, miners’ labor activities, and local perspectives about environmentalists reinforce stewardship values and constrain the types of environmental concern that are deemed legitimate in the community. Attending to such processes of environmental concern formation can help the environmental movement expand its base and can assist resource extraction communities in maintaining environmental and economic stability.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":"7 1","pages":"421 - 433"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23251042.2021.1913021","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48051530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘The revolution’s never done’: the role of ‘radical imagination’ within anti-capitalist environmental justice activism","authors":"Ivy Scurr, V. Bowden","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.1916142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.1916142","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Many individuals become involved in activism due to concerns about contemporary structural conditions and likely (negative) futures arising from them. While negative perceptions are important for driving initial involvement, visions of positive alternative futures to work towards can be crucial for motivating and shaping activist engagement. Positive visions serve as a goal as well as a potential blueprint to inform practices such that the ‘means match the ends.’ In this paper, we explore Khasnabish and Haiven’s concept of the ‘radical imagination’ as a practice in sustaining and shaping social movement engagement through a shared vision of an alternative future. We emphasise the processes of organising and grounding action in practices of the present, which forms part of a ‘praxis of prefiguration’ – informing many aspects of community building and activism. While the radical imagination shared by anti-capitalist activists is sometimes depicted as a utopian dream, we suggest that it is, rather, a hopeful imagining in constant conversation with ideological positions and organising practices, situated against and within the margins of capitalist society. These ideological commitments and future imaginings shape the ways that anti-capitalists engage with overlapping environmental and social issues and the wider landscape of political action.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":"7 1","pages":"316 - 326"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23251042.2021.1916142","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48047070","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What counts as sustainability?: a sociospatial analysis","authors":"K. Beasy, Michael Corbett","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.1913320","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.1913320","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Sustainability is a ubiquitous term today and one that is central to key environmental and social policy discussions relating to the most pressing questions faced in contemporary societies. In this paper we argue that sustainability needs to be understood in relation to social space. We do so by engaging with Pierre Bourdieu’s thinking tools as well as Edward Soja’s spatial analysis to deconstruct how differently positioned actors understand and relate to space, including how to sustain it. Drawing on focus group and interview data from a small Australian city, we use Soja’s typology to critique spatial tropes and dualistic frames common in sustainability discourses such as ecological/social, global/local, and reveal nuanced interpretations of spatial relations.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":"7 1","pages":"327 - 337"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23251042.2021.1913320","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43185833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The multiple people of color origins of the US environmental justice movement: social movement spillover and regional racial projects in California","authors":"Tracy Perkins","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2020.1848502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2020.1848502","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper contributes to scholarship on the origins of the US environmental justice movement (EJM) through exploration of the early EJM in California. The national EJM is often seen as having grown out of the intersection of environmentalism and the Black civil rights movement in the 1982 protests in Warren County, North Carolina. This paper adds weight to alternate narratives that depict the EJM as drawing on a variety of racialized social movement infrastructures that vary regionally. These infrastructures, as they were built in California, are analyzed as regional racial projects responding to histories of white supremacy that are connected through social movement spillover. This conceptual framework illuminates the place-based ways in which racial oppression and racial justice responses create social movement infrastructure that persists across multiple movement formations, both across contemporary groups and through time. The paper draws on data gathered from existing case studies and oral histories, in-depth interviews, participant observation, and archival documents to offer a capacious view of the EJM’s origins.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":"7 1","pages":"147 - 159"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23251042.2020.1848502","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46798402","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Raoul S. Liévanos, Elizabeth Wilder, Lauren Richter, Jennifer S. Carrera, Michael Mascarenhas
{"title":"Challenging the white spaces of environmental sociology","authors":"Raoul S. Liévanos, Elizabeth Wilder, Lauren Richter, Jennifer S. Carrera, Michael Mascarenhas","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.1902665","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.1902665","url":null,"abstract":"In 2015, Dorceta Taylor received the Fred Buttel Outstanding Contribution to the Field of Environmental Sociology Award at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA). At a business meeting that year, Dr. Taylor observed that the ASA Section on Environmental Sociology has remained as white as it was when she first became a member decades ago (Wilder et al. 2019). The following year, the section council placed the topic of ‘diversity’ on the business meeting agenda – but time ran short and the meeting was adjourned without any discussion. In response to the fact that these concerns had been repeatedly raised but not adequately addressed, four of the authors of this essay formed an ad hoc Committee on Racial Equity (CRE). In its first year, the CRE tasked itself with investigating racial and ethnic diversity within the section, assessing the professional climate for scholars of color, and recommending changes in section policies and practices. Our research revealed that although U.S. sociology is more racially diverse than it was in the early 2000s, this pattern does not hold for environmental sociology. In spite of growing overall membership in recent years, the ASA Section on Environmental Sociology has actually lost graduate student and faculty members of color over the last decade (Mascarenhas et al. 2017a). Additionally, we found that among our majority-white survey respondents, there seemed to be little knowledge about the working and learning conditions of faculty and students of color in the section (Mascarenhas et al. 2017b). Moreover, while many white section members expressed support for the work of the CRE, some explicitly or implicitly placed the responsibility on scholars and students of color to insert themselves into the field rather than putting the onus on the field to provide an environment and scholarly community that are more welcoming (Mascarenhas et al. 2017b). We concluded that U.S. environmental sociology remains constituted by multiple forms of ‘white space’ (Mascarenhas et al. 2017a); that is, spaces characterized by the overwhelming presence of whites in everyday interactions and positions of authority, which formally and informally act as barriers to inclusion and belonging for people of color (Anderson 2015). White space can also produce and reproduce ‘tastes, perceptions, feelings, and emotions’ (Bonilla-Silva 2014, 104) on racial dynamics that protect and promote white interests (Bonilla-Silva, Goar, and Embrick 2006). It is clear to the CRE that U.S. environmental sociology being theorized, taught, and experienced as a white space is a phenomenon worthy of our collective scrutiny, as white institutional spaces are not accidental, and they carry epistemic implications (Moore 2007; Murphy 2021).","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":"7 1","pages":"103 - 109"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23251042.2021.1902665","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47512182","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Natural gas – friend or foe of the environment? Evaluating the framing contest over natural gas through a public opinion survey in the Pacific Northwest","authors":"S. Hazboun, Hilary S. Boudet","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.1904535","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.1904535","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT A fierce debate is raging about the role of natural gas in North America’s energy mix. Once viewed as a bridge fuel for renewable energy, it is increasingly being characterized as hindering the energy transition. We explore public opinions about natural gas, its use and export, among residents in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. While many of our respondents supported the continued use of natural gas in electricity generation and viewed it as relatively environmentally friendly, they did not feel that the benefits of fracking (increasingly the main source of natural gas production) outweigh its risks. Males, political conservatives, those who prioritized the economy over the environment, and those who didn’t subscribe to anthropogenic global warming felt more favorably toward natural gas. Furthermore, those who saw gas as more environmentally friendly were more supportive of gas usage and export, while those with pro-environmental views were less likely to support it.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":"7 1","pages":"368 - 381"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23251042.2021.1904535","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45691219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Making climate information useable for forest-based climate change interventions in South Africa","authors":"C. Ofoegbu, Chinwe Ifejika Speranza","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.1904534","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.1904534","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Understanding knowledge systems, that is the combination of agents, practices, and institutions that organize the production, transfer, and use of knowledge and their role in making climate information useable for forest-based climate responses, is critical for building resilience to climate change. This study used the concept of a knowledge system to examine how organizational collaboration, in the processes of forecast translation, influences the production of useable information in forest-based climate change interventions in South Africa. Twenty-two key informant interviews were conducted with actors in the fields of climate change and forestry. Results reveal that carbon sequestration and landscape management are the dominant forest-based climate interventions. Consequently, the information translated from the forecasts is tailored towards facilitating the implementation of these two interventions. Network analysis reveals that actors in the categories of small-scale forest companies and community-based enterprises are less integrated into the process of information production. A concerted effort towards the meaningful integration of all categories of actors in the process of information production, as well as the production of information that encourages the implementation of other types of forest-based climate change interventions such as forest bioenergy, is thus recommended.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":"7 1","pages":"279 - 293"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23251042.2021.1904534","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47173740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Trade union perceptions of the labour - nature relationship","authors":"N. Räthzel","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.1897766","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.1897766","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper is based on research with environmentally engaged trade unionists in India. It follows their trajectories into the trade union and explores their environmental engagements. A short presentation of the history of Indian trade unionism, aims to understand its ‘multi-unionism’. Analysing three exemplary life-histories of unionists, their motivations to engage in unions and their relationships to workers and to poor people, three models of perceiving the labour-nature relationship are offered: the container model, nature as a mediator of survival, and the nature-labour alliance. I show that the way in which unionists perceive the labour-nature relationship is shaped by their practices and influences their environmental policies. Furthermore, trade unions who seek alliances with other social movements on equal terms, develop a more comprehensive perception of the labour-nature relationship and thereby the development of more wide-ranging environmental policies. I conclude suggesting that the conditions enabling a more comprehensive perception of the labour-nature relationship could become possible if workers along the value chain could collaborate to learn from each other about their working conditions and the natures they transform.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":"7 1","pages":"267 - 278"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23251042.2021.1897766","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42428742","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Environmental public interest litigation: new roles for civil society organizations in environmental governance in China","authors":"Zhuang Hao, S. Wolf","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.1897243","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.1897243","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In 2015, the Government of China enacted Environmental Public-Interest Litigation (EPiL) as an amendment to its revised Environmental Protection Law. This policy granted civil organizations standing in court to represent public interests applied to environmental values. Based on a review of EPiL developments since 2015 and a case study focused on soil pollution litigation pursued by a leading environmental non-governmental organization (NGO), this paper analyzes the contemporary dynamics of Chinese environmental governance and strategies through which NGOs are leveraging EPiL to advance policy change. Through critical engagement with the concepts of experimentalist governance, this paper highlights the complex pathways through which empowerment of civil society organizations produced policy shifts. Rather than focusing on information and learning derived from purposive experimentation, this study highlights how entrance of new actors introduced practical knowledge and new values that catalyzed an array of changes in governance arrangements. While the metaphor of experimentation suggests a system that is well understood and subject to controls, we identify substantial indeterminacy and openness in governance.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":"7 1","pages":"393 - 406"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23251042.2021.1897243","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46264446","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Urban parks, the growth machine, and the media: An analysis of press coverage of the high line, klyde warren park, and the rail park","authors":"Lauren E. Mullenbach, A. Mowen, K. Brasier","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.1893429","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.1893429","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT News media have the power to influence public opinion and economic growth. News coverage of landmark urban parks may influence public support of such parks, potentially increasing economic growth. However, some landmark urban parks have been associated with gentrification and displacement. News media may implicitly support local economic growth to the detriment of vulnerable residents through uncritical, positive coverage of park projects. However, the nature of press coverage of landmark urban parks has been scantly studied. This study analyzed news coverage of three landmark urban parks to understand how news media portray such parks and the voices they represent, using comparative thematic analysis. We found both broad support of parks, contributing to a societal master narrative of parks as a universal good, and some critique. Altogether, positive press coverage outweighed criticism. Uncritical promotion of parks could result in continued creation of landmark parks that threaten to facilitate gentrification and displacement.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":"7 1","pages":"407 - 420"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23251042.2021.1893429","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47090794","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}