Assembling Justice Spaces: The Scalar Politics of Environmental Justice in North-east England

Abstract:  In contrast to the US environmental justice movement, which has been successful in building a networked environmentalism that recognises—and has impacted upon—national patterns of distributional (in)equalities, campaigns in the UK have rarely developed beyond the local or articulated a coherent programme of action that links to wider socio-spatial justice issues or effects real changes in the regulatory or political environment. Our purpose in this paper is to extend research which explores the spatial politics of mobilisation, by attending to the multi-scalar dynamics embedded in the enactment of environmental justice (EJ) in north-east England. It is an approach that is indebted to recent work on the scalar politics of EJ, and also to the network ideas associated with actor-network theory (ANT)-inspired research on human–nature relations. Our account provides preliminary reflections on the potential for an "assemblage" perspective which draws together people, texts, machines, animals, devices and discourses in relations that collectively constitute—and scale—EJ. To conclude, and building upon this approach, we suggest future research avenues that we believe present a promising agenda for critical engagement with the production, scaling and politics of environmental (in)justice.     

False Antitheses? Marxism,Nature and Actor‐Networks

This paper stages an encounter between two critical approaches that have been central to the recent "greening" of left geography. The theoretical and normative claims of the first approach, eco-Marxism, have been subject to sometimes biting criticism from advocates of the second approach, actor-network theory (ANT). Taking a nonorthodox Marxist perspective, I argue that the ANT critique of political economy approaches to nature is overstated and only partly defensible. By distinguishing between different modalities of eco-Marxism and ANT, I show the seeming standoff between the two approaches to society-nature relations to be false. Splitting the difference between a weak version of ANT and a relational version of eco-Marxism yields a political economy approach to socionature that arguably avoids the excesses of strong modalities of ANT and dualistic forms of eco-Marxism. By seeking to bridge the apparent gap between Marxism and ANT, the paper avoids reducing either approach to society-nature relations to one fixed position or theoretical-normative "essence". Instead, a particular modality of ANT is used to address the weaknesses of certain extant versions of eco-Marxism. The resulting synthesis offers conceptual tools with which Marxists can still critique a pervasive mode of human relationality to nature–namely, capitalist–while multiplying the actors and complicating the politics involved in approaching the society-environment nexus.     

Intervention: Engaging post-foundational political theory requires an ‘enmeshed’ approach

This intervention argues for renewed engagements with post-foundational political theory (PFPT) within political geography. We feel that post-foundational political geography may be on the cusp of becoming consolidated as a distinct and expansive approach to political geographic scholarship, but we argue that reductionist and binary caricatures of its central distinction between ‘politics’ and ‘the political’ must be avoided for it to reach its full potential. To this end, we suggest that ‘politics’ and ‘the political’ need to be considered as more ‘enmeshed’ than they have often been represented. We write as four political geographers and will, each in our own ways, highlight how an ‘enmeshed’ approach to PFPT can better translate its conceptual interventions into political geographic research whilst facilitating productive encounters with the broader worlds of critical geographic inquiry.     

Environmental Justice Meets Risk‐Class: The Relational Distribution of Environmental Bads

Recent treatments of environmental justice have highlighted the need to move beyond focusing upon inequalities in the distribution of environmental risks to address other aspects of environmental injustice, including unequal participation and recognition. While acknowledging the importance of extending environmental justice to include these other dimensions of justice, this paper argues that more, not less, analytical attention needs to be devoted to the diverse logics of distribution of environmental risks. In light of continuing dilemmas associated with whether environmental inequalities can be just or, alternatively, that environmental inequality and injustice are co‐extensive, this paper proposes to untangle some key connections between environmental inequalities and injustice through a critical confrontation of environmental justice with risk‐class analysis. Focusing on the positional or relational distribution of environmental bads as analysed in risk‐class analysis, this paper argues that bringing these two bodies of knowledge together can illuminate how relational inequalities have characteristics that make them particularly illegitimate from a justice perspective, thus making an advance in identifying key connections between environmental inequality and injustice.     

The political geographies of D/decolonization: Variegation and decolonial challenges of /in geography

Anglophone and North Atlantic geography is enmeshed institutionally, epistemically and racially in colonial modern privilege, highlighting the urgent task of addressing its modes of theorization, interpretation, and research. Decolonizing analysis builds from postcolonial, critical, feminist and racism critiques, and problematizes accounts of knowledge, subjectivity and power. In pursuit of decolonizing knowledge production and addressing global inequalities, this paper enjoins political geography to more systematically engage with decolonial analysis, conceptualization and theory. Political geography has much to contribute to interdisciplinary decolonial scholarship through contextualized, grounded, multiscalar and granular analysis of socio-spatial relations. The paper examines the common ground and potential tensions between Anglophone political geographies and decolonial theory (῾decoloniality’), then examines the case of Ecuador's politics of plurinationalism to illustrate a decolonizing political geographical analysis. The case highlights how the variegated political geographies of decolonization arising within and against coloniality require from political geography a decolonial turn, which would entail divesting core political geography concepts of western norms, including plural epistemologies of space and power in analysis, and recalibrating knowledge production processes.     

Gendered Geographies of Environmental Injustice

Abstract:  As environmental justice concerns become more widely embedded in environmental organizations and policymaking, and increasingly the focus of academic study, the gender dimension dissolves into an exclusive focus on race/ethnicity and class/income. While grassroots campaigning activities were often dominated by women, in the more institutionalized activities of organizations dominated by salaried professionals, gender inequality is neglected as a vector of environmental injustice, and addressing this inequality is not considered a strategy for redress. This paper explores some of the reasons why this may be so, which include a lack of visibility of gendered environmental injustice; professional campaigning organizations which are themselves gender blind; institutions at a range of scales which are still structured by gender (as well as class and race) inequalities; and an intellectual academy which continues to marginalize the study of gender—and women's—inequality. The authors draw on experience of environmental activism, participant observation, and other qualitative research into the gendering of environmental activity, to first explore the constructions of scale to see how this might limit a gender-fair approach to environmental justice. Following this, the practice of "gender mainstreaming" in environmental organizations and institutions will be examined, demonstrating how this is limited in scope and fails to impact on the gendering of environmental injustice.     

Towards a feminist geopolitics

The intersections and conversations between feminist geography and political geography have been surprisingly few. The notion of a feminist geopolitics remains undeveloped in geography. This paper aims to create a theoretical and practical space in which to articulate a feminist geopolitics. Feminist geopolitics is not an alternative theory of geopolitics, nor the ushering in of a new spatial order, but is an approach to global issues with feminist politics in mind. 'Feminist' in this context refers to analyses and political interventions that address the unequal and often violent relationships among people based on real or perceived differences. Building upon the literature from critical geopolitics, feminist international relations, and transnational feminist studies, I develop a framework for feminist political engagement. The paper interrogates concepts of human security and juxtaposes them with state security, arguing for a more accountable, embodied, and responsive notion of geopolitics. A feminist geopolitics is sought by examining politics at scales other than that of the nation-state; by challenging the public/private divide at a global scale; and by analyzing the politics of mobility for perpetrators of crimes against humanity. As such, feminist geopolitics is a critical approach and a contingent set of political practices operating at scales finer and coarser than the nation-state.     

Defining and Contesting Environmental Justice: Socio-natures and the Politics of Scale in the Delta

Abstract:  This article examines a contemporary process intended to "identify a strategy for managing the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta as a sustainable ecosystem that would continue to support environmental and economic functions that are critical to the people of California" ( Delta Vision 2008 , http://deltavision.ca.gov/AboutDeltaVision.shtml ). Environmental injustices in the Delta are exacerbated by connected conflicts between knowledge and power, over the scale at which "environmental justice" and the "Delta" are understood through public policy. The rejection of environmental justice and the socio-natural in the Delta Vision process represents how contemporary policy processes are recreating and reenacting the power/knowledge dynamics that have defined the Delta, placed it on a path to ecological collapse and injected high levels of social and racial injustice in its landscape over the past 150 years. Our article combines an ethnographic and a historical geographical approach that contributes to the literature on environmental justice and scale and links with the literature on water governance and power to advance the task of defining environmental justice from the academic and policy perspectives.     

Acknowledging the Racial State: An Agenda for Environmental Justice Research

Abstract:  This paper argues that environmental justice scholars have tended to overlook the significance of the state's role in shaping understandings of race and racism, and argues for the use of critical race theory to deepen insight into the role of the state in both fostering and responding to conditions of racialized environmental injustice. Critical race theory offers insights into both why and how the state manages racial categories in such a way as to produce environmental injustice, and how the state responds to the claims of the environmental justice movement. Closer attention to the interplay between the racial state and the environmental justice movement as a racial social movement will yield important insights into the conditions, processes, institutions and state apparatuses that foster environmental injustice and that delimit the possibilities for achieving environmental justice in some form or another.     

Scale frames and counter-scale frames: constructing the problem of environmental injustice

The concept of environmental injustice raises difficult questions about on how best to measure and address environmental inequities across space, and environmental justice politics are permeated by considerable debate over the nature and spatial extent of both problem and possible solutions. This paper theorizes the politics of environmental justice as a politics of scale in order to explore how environmental justice activists respond to the scalar ambiguity inherent in the political concept of environmental justice. With a case study of a controversy over a proposed polyvinylchloride production facility in rural Convent, Louisiana, I develop the concept of scale frames and counter-scale frames as strategic discursive representations of a social grievance that do the work of naming, blaming, and claiming, with meaningful reference to particular geographic scales. The significance of scale is expressed alternatively within these frames as an analytical spatial category, as scales of regulation, as territorial framework(s) for cultural legitimacy, and as a means of inclusion, exclusion and legitimation.     

Revisiting the Urban Classics

The classic urban pluralist studies are reconceptualized as providing alternative theoretical perspectives. These political order and economic development perspectives exert an enduring influence, as seen in urban regime theory and in Paul Peterson's economistic conception of politics in City Limits. A supplementary theoretical perspective is proposed that addresses the problem of inequality and takes the promotion of social justice as the principal task of urban governance. Reconciling the three perspectives provides a more comprehensive framework for conducting research.     

国外人文地理学尺度政治理论研究进展

尺度政治理论产生于生产方式的变革与全球化的深入发展、新自由主义的兴起与治理方式的转型以及西方人文地理学的尺度转向等实践和理论背景中。其研究经历了由重点关注尺度的政治建构到重点关注行动者的话语和实践的转变。以此为基础,从结构-行为-行动者视角可以总结出尺度政治研究的三个方向:作为政治过程的尺度结构转变、跨尺度的政治行为与策略以及跨尺度的政治行动者联系网络。随后,本文回顾了当前研究中的三个案例以进一步阐明尺度政治理论的实践应用以及上述三个方向之间的区别与联系。最后,基于国内语境,本文从理论和实证两方面出发初步探讨了国内下一步研究应重点关注的问题。     

中国政治地理学研究展望

相对于人文地理学的其他几个主要分支学科而言,政治地理学在中国发展缓慢。本文认为这主要不是由于中国缺乏政治地理研究的素材,也不单纯是由于中国缺乏研究政治的环境。从学科的角度看,有四个方面的原因束缚了政治地理学在中国的发展:地理学分析尺度的下移、建设性实证研究的缺乏、相关学科理论支持不足和地理学本身"远离政治"的惯性影响。本文在粗略梳理了西方政治地理学发展脉络的基础上,通过对比分析,提出了中国政治地理学发展的三个方向:城市政治地理、地方政治地理和新地缘政治学,期待中国政治地理多尺度、多样化的实证研究尽快展开。     

The Personal is Political: Developing new subjectivities through participatory action research

Participatory action research (PAR) is gaining critical attention from scholars across the social sciences, and in the field of geography more specifically, as it promises a viable alternative for researchers concerned with social justice. If most of the benefits of PAR are identified in terms of its potential as a vehicle for social change and action, PAR's role in personal change is less understood. This paper considers the development of new subjectivities in a PAR process from a post-structural perspective. My objective is to reframe and connect the social justice orientation of PAR to a feminist post-structural project which emphasizes the fluidity and multiplicity of subject positions as the basis for personal (and social) transformation. Analysis draws upon collaborative research conducted with six young women in New York City and their project Makes Me Mad: Stereotypes of young urban womyn of color. Discussion addresses the role of critical reflection, dialogue, emotion, and narrative in the participatory research process. Building upon critical educator/theorist Paolo Freire's contributions to PAR, I address issues of power, scale, and the politics of location in order to contribute to understandings of spatial praxis.     

On Ambivalence and (Anti-)Normativity (or,Theology as a Way of Life?)

ABSTRACT

This essay argues that queer theory’s ongoing reflection about its own disciplinary identity yields insights that could benefit contemporary political theology. Exploring how internal discussions and debates on the queerness of queer theory can serve as an instructive analogy for similar conversations about the “theologicalness” of political theology, this essay proposes two potential insights that can be gleaned. First, political theology should continue to draw on and do theology, but it should not worry about venturing outside the bounds of what is presumed to be the theological. Theological reflection develops from, and also engenders, communicative and critical expressions, which are deeply important theological modes of political theology, central to its identity even as they appear at times to broaden or stray from it. Second, political theology should look more to politics, broadly understood as the various ways of ordering human life and the utilization and manifestation of power in that structuring, for the theology it offers. In these ways and more, this essay concludes, political theology, like queer theory, is both theory and praxis, a body of knowledge and way of life.     

More is more: Scaling political ecology within limits to growth

This piece responds to the article Is less more… or is more less? Scaling the political ecology of the future, where Paul Robbins (2019) discusses degrowth and modernism as two competing political imaginaries with regard to the growth-technology-environment nexus. Arguing from the perspective of ecological economics, I engage with the literature on political ecology to discuss the notions of limits to growth, Malthusianism, austerity and scarcity, as well as the role of technology as both environmental problem and solution. The paper exposes key divergences between different traditions in political ecology with regard to technological and economic scale. First, against the argument that limits to growth is a mere social construct, I call attention to research on ecological thresholds and to the perils of epistemic relativisms in a post-truth era. Second, against the idea that limits represent an elitist discourse, I call attention to long-standing traditions in emancipatory politics that defend limits in the name of justice. Third, against the thesis that more is less, I refer to mounting empirical evidence indicating that more is more (growth brings more environmental destruction, not less). I contend that political ecology can have much to gain from engaging with the political utopia of degrowth, but far less so from the technological utopia of modernism, which –I argue– reinforces status quo and offers false solutions to the environmental challenges of our time. Emancipation, I claim, is not about bringing more to more, but about bringing enough to everyone.     

Gender and the Australian Parliament: Putting the Political Scientist into the Picture

This paper draws on a study of gender and politics in the Australian parliament in order to make a contribution to methodological debates in feminist political science. The paper begins by outlining the different dimensions of feminist political science methodology that have been identified in the literature. According to this literature five key principles can be seen to constitute feminist approaches to political science. These are: a focus on gender, a deconstruction of the public/private divide, giving voice to women, using research as a basis for transformation, and using reflexivity to critique researcher positionality. The next part of the paper focuses more specifically on reflexivity tracing arguments about its definition, usefulness and the criticisms it has attracted from researchers. Following this, I explore how my background as a member of the Australian House of Representatives from 1987 to 1996 provided an important academic resource in my doctoral study of gender and politics in the national parliament. Through this process I highlight the value of a reflexive approach to research.     

Environmental Justice and American Indian Tribal Sovereignty: Case Study of a Land–Use Conflict in Skull Valley, Utah

This paper examines environmental justice in the context of questions of American–Indian tribal sovereignty through an analysis of a land–use dispute over the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians' decision to host a high–level radioactive waste facility on their reservation in Tooele County, Utah. The case study entails a far more intricate story than that presented in the majority of existing literature, which is dominated by analytical frameworks of environmental racism and distributive environmental justice. By elucidating the historical geography of Skull Valley and politics of tribal sovereignty, I argue that a prolonged process of historical colonialism has produced a landscape of injustice in which the tribe's choices have been structurally limited. The historical colonialism, intertwining with the capitalist political economy, has geopolitically isolated the tribe to suffer procedural environmental injustice. At the same time, the tribe has struggled to pursue self–determination through the retention of sovereignty and Goshute identity in the arenas of tribal environmental management and the environmental–justice movement. Conflict over the definition and practice of tribal sovereignty at different geographical scales reveals the social, historical, and political–economic complexity of environmental justice.     

‘Accidents’ and invisibilities: Scaled discourse and the naturalization of regulatory neglect in California's pesticide drift conflict

In this paper, I draw on the politics of scale literature in order to discuss the strategic use of scale as a framing device. I argue that scale-based framings can gain effectiveness through capitalizing on longstanding social inequalities and thus deserve careful consideration for their abilities to reinforce those inequalities and obscure ongoing illness. I discuss the ways in which actors in the present conflict over agricultural pesticide drift in California discursively engage scale in order to reframe the issue and justify (or, in other cases, contest) minimal regulatory response. I argue that the predominant scale-based framing of pesticide drift as a series of particularized, local ‘accidents’ gains its effectiveness through multiple intersections with long-standing social invisibilities and injustices endured by California's farmworkers, with the problematic results of rendering pollution invisible and naturalizing regulatory neglect. I also introduce the efforts of pesticide drift activists to ‘push up’ the framing of the issue, improve their political traction at the statewide level, and justify their demands for precautionary, health-based restrictions on the use of agricultural pesticides. Finally, I conclude by applying this analysis to recent debates for devolved environmental governance and problematizing the tendency to associate local governance and social justice.     

Struggles for Environmental Justice in US Prisons and Jails

In this paper I ask how might environmental justice studies scholarship be recast if we consider the phenomenon of environmental injustice as a form of criminalisation? In other words, since environmental injustice is frequently a product of state‐sanctioned violence against communities of colour, then what are the implications of reframing it as a practice of treating those populations as criminally suspect and as deserving of state punishment? Moreover, how are the targets and survivors of environmental injustice/racism enlisted in generative ways that resist that criminalisation and support abolition? I answer these questions through a consideration of how struggles inside and outside of carceral spaces represent urgent and timely opportunities to rethink the possibilities of environmental justice theory and politics by linking them to practices and visions of abolition ecology and critical environmental justice.