Certainty,Fairness, and Balance: State Resonance and Environmental Justice Policy Implementation1

Little research has examined how and why institutional context and framing dynamics shape the institutionalization of movement claims into the state’s formal policies, and what the implication of these processes might be for movements attempting to mobilize on the same conceptual terms after institutionalization. In this study, I explore the role institutional context and framing play in the institutionalization of movement claims in a case: the implementation of environmental justice policy in the California Environmental Protection Agency from 2002 to 2007. I ask: How and why were aspects of the environmental justice frame institutionalized into regulatory policy while others were not? I use ethnographic field methods and content analysis of archival data to answer this question and offer two contributions to previous research. First, I add to previous scholarship on the environmental justice movement by identifying the character of newer problems faced by movement actors as they engage in regulatory policy processes with opponents in the United States. Second, I extend social movement framing theory by developing the notion of “state resonance” to understand how and why a collective action frame is institutionalized and implemented in regulatory policy.     

Clarifying Criminological and Social Psychological Theory: A Second Look at the Relationship between Injustice and General Strain Theory

Research in social psychology and criminology reveals a great deal of overlap when explaining the relationship between injustice and criminal or deviant behavior. The organizational justice literature examines how the major forms of justice (distributive, procedural, and interactional) combine and interact to influence criminal or deviant behaviors in the workplace. While general strain theory (GST) recognizes that injustice is an aspect of strain that fosters criminal coping in multiple contexts, it does not detail the additive and interactive effects that these types of injustice may have on crime. Nevertheless, GST can provide a useful theoretical lens for understanding how injustice facilitates criminal behavior. This article provides an overview of major findings regarding the relationship between injustice and crime according to a GST framework, concluding with a discussion of new directions for future research.     

Public Scholarship and Community Engagement in Building Community Food Security: The Case of the University of Kentucky

The current call for public scholarship and community engagement by universities and disciplinary organizations has created opportunities to develop innovative ways to integrate research, instruction, and outreach. This article discusses a collaboration among scholars at the University of Kentucky and alternative agrifood movement organizations that has evolved as they pursue an alternative agrifood system in Kentucky. This collaboration made instructional programs in sociology and the honors world food issues track places in which both students and instructors can examine “problems” of the conventional agrifood system, conduct research, and develop collaborative relationships with community activists. We draw on Burawoy's discussion of public sociology and its interface with professional, critical, and policy sociologies. Supplementing our discussion with literature from social movements and science studies, we demonstrate how this integrated approach can render sociological knowledge and skills useful as critical support of alternative agrifood movements. We argue that the “experiential classroom” is an excellent site for the critical examination within the agrifood movements of oppositional culture. This, in turn, makes possible students' recognition of injustice in the existing agrifood system.     

Fields,Logics, and Social Movements: Prison Abolition and the Social Justice Field*

This essay argues that field analyses of social movements can be improved by incorporating more insights from Pierre Bourdieu. In particular, Bourdieu’s concepts of logic, symbolic capital, illusio, and doxa can enrich social movement scholarship by enabling scholars to identify new objects of study, connect organizational‐ and individual‐level effects, and shed new light on a variety of familiar features of social movements. I demonstrate this claim by delineating the contours of one such field, the “social justice field” (SJF). I argue that the SJF is a delimited, trans‐movement arena of contentious politics united by the logic of the pursuit of radical social justice. Drawing upon existing scholarship, as well as my own research on the prison abolition movement, I argue that the competitive demands of the field produce characteristic effects on organizations and individual activists within the field. I conclude by considering how a Bourdieuian approach can provide fresh insights into familiar problematics within the social movements literature.     

Exploring the Intersection of Environmental Degradation and Poverty: Environmental Injustice in Nairobi,Kenya

Environmental justice explores the nexus between structural inequalities and environmental degradation. Although scholarship on environmental justice is vast, this literature is centred in developed countries, rather than exploring the injustices occurring in international contexts. This study aims to address this gap through a combined phenomenological and ethnographic approach in Jam City, a poor community in Nairobi, Kenya. Findings that are discussed include the similarities of environmental injustices between Jam City and the established literature as well as several nuances with the literature, including how lack of resources for response perpetuates injustice and how environmental hazards may not be explicitly dangerous but can still cause disparate harms. This study supports the argument that social workers should be more involved in promoting environmental justice by increasing our focus on the topic in our curriculum, research and practice.     

Ecologically unequal exchange: A theory of global environmental injustice

In this article, we review the theory of ecologically unequal exchange and its relevance for global environmental injustice. According to this theory, global political–economic factors, especially the structure of international trade, shape the unequal distribution of environmental harms and human development; wealthier and more powerful Global North nations have disproportionate access to both natural resources and sink capacity for waste in Global South nations. We discuss how the theory has roots in multiple perspectives on development, world‐systems analysis, environmental sociology, and ecological economics. We detail research that tests hypotheses derived from ecological unequal exchange theory on several environmental harms, including deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, and water pollution as well as related human well‐being outcomes. We also discuss research on social forces that counter the harmful impacts of ecologically unequal exchange, including institutions, organizations, and environmental justice movements. We suggest that ecologically unequal exchange theory provides an important global political–economic approach for research in environmental sociology and other environmental social sciences as well as for sustainability studies more broadly.     

'It's good to talk': The focus group and the sociological imagination

This paper argues that the critical social scientist can employ the focus group – group discussions focused by a facilitator around a particular topic or area of experience – to recast radically both the social relations and the object of the research process. I explore the potential of the focus group to cultivate the sociological imagination in both the facilitating social scientist and the participants: in Bhaskarian terms, a 'transformtional act', raising consciousness and empowering participants, rupturing rather than reproducing underlying relations of exploitation and domination. The hitherto dominant forms of focus group research are criticised as being embedded in the epistemological and methodological assumptions of positivism, behaviourism and empiricism, and in social relations which service power. The qualities of the focus group which have attracted the marketer and advertiser – access to the experiential knowledge, opinions and world-view of the participants, in a context of synergic interaction – are examined. The paper argues for an alternative, radical use of focus groups, based on the new politics of knowledge associated with movements of social resistance. The relationship between this radical conception of focus groups and both Habermas's theory of communicative action and Bhaskar's critical realism is discussed and examples of the potential for focus groups to democratise governance and service provision are offered.     

Production and extrapolation of meaning in the environmental justice movement

We analyze the structural determinants of social construction processes in the environmental justice movement. We argue that initial structural conditions legitimated environmental grievances that were transformed in the 1980s into a sense of environmental injustice. Environmental injustice was produced through perceptions of: the Love Canal and Three Mile Island disasters; the Reagan administration's environmental deregulation; and continuing discoveries of contaminated communities. In the extrapolation of meaning, the grievance of environmental injustice evolved into the goal of environmental justice through interaction between grassroots environmental activists and national civil rights leaders.     

Breaking free from siloes: intersectionality as a collective action frame to address toxic exposures and reproductive health

ABSTRACT

There has been increasing interest in collaborative approaches between the environmental justice (EJ) and reproductive justice (RJ) movements to address the higher burden of toxic exposures and associated reproductive health outcomes in vulnerable communities. This study examined the collective action frames (CAFs) of advocates at the EJ/RJ nexus. CAFs highlight how advocates identify problems and solutions, and motivate action. The use of intersectionality was identified as a main CAF used in three key ways: breaking free from identity-based, issue-based, and movement-based siloes. First, interviewees described breaking free from identity-based siloes by identifying risks of toxic exposures that result from intersecting social locations (e.g. gender, race/ethnicity, income, immigration status) and by equally prioritizing multiple aspects of their identities as they engage in advocacy. Second, they described breaking free from issue-based siloes by developing multi-issue agendas that address a complex web of interrelated problems impacting health. Third, they described breaking free from movement-based siloes by developing cross-movement collaborations to address issues of mutual concern. Among multiple reasons given for cross-movement collaborations, advocates perceived them as valuable in order to disrupt social, political, and economic power imbalances that shape environmental reproductive health inequities, as well as other health and social inequities. Based on these findings, we suggest that intersectionality is a master frame, and thus may be useful to advocates in other social movements addressing intersectional issues. Understanding an intersectionality frame can help to inform advocacy approaches to promote health and health equity, particularly those focused on policies and structural drivers of health.     

Environmental Justice Is a Social Justice Issue: Incorporating Environmental Justice Into Social Work Practice Curricula

Social justice education for social work practice is concerned with addressing issues of power and oppression as they impact intersections of identity, experience, and the social environment. However, little focus is directed toward the physical and natural environment despite overwhelming evidence that traditionally marginalized groups bear the burden of environmental problems. In this article, we discuss environmental disaster impacts on marginalized communities, presence of environmental justice in social work literature, and opportunities for integrating environmental justice into social work’s mandated disciplinary competencies. We conclude with an example of a module implemented in a foundation Social Justice for Social Work Practice course using place-based education principles as an illustration of concrete strategies for incorporating environmental justice into social justice curricula.     

Centacare in the Northern Territory

Abstract

At the present time, social work in England finds itself at the crossroads. Against a backdrop of economic globalisation, it has been caught up in New Labour's modernising policy discourse that has recast social justice in terms of opportunity, inclusion, and “choice”. More recently, this has been extended by the introduction of a “respect agenda”, a reaction to the loss of community cohesion and the rise in antisocial behaviour. In the present article, two alternative paradigmatic responses are explored reflecting a debate between evidence-based practice (EBP) and critical practice (CP). These may be juxtaposed because they offer different visions of what social work could become in the future while providing two important reference points against which current practice may be judged. Whereas the former has been depicted as a “search for certainty” that largely complements the modernising discourse, CP works with both certainty and uncertainty in the quest for more emancipatory change. In practice, English social workers may manage such contradictions by looking down both roads and incorporating elements of both in their practice: adopting elements of EBP to justify their interventions and become more research minded while embracing aspects of CP to engage with structural issues that lie at the root of injustice.     

包容性增长的印度模式及其对中国的启示

包容性增长作为一种新的经济社会发展理论,旨在坚持发展经济,坚持社会公平正义,坚持以人为本,让经济全球化和经济发展成果通过扶贫政策、扩大生产性就业领域、提高人力资源能力和社会保障能力等途径,惠及所有国家和地区、惠及所有人群。本文分析了包容性增长理论诞生的背景,归纳了其概念的内涵,总结了印度实施包容性增长的主要做法,并以此为借鉴,提出了中国实施包容性增长的基本路径。这对当今我国正在编制的国民经济十二五规划,促进经济社会包容性、可持续、平衡的发展具有重要现实意义。     

Rethinking Activism and Expertise within Environmental Health Conflicts

This review presents the contributions of research on the intersection of science and social movements, its theoretical and methodological limitations, and potential solutions for its further development. Three different types of relationships between activism and knowledge have been identified within environmental health conflicts: (i) lay – activists requesting help from sympathetic scientists in order to conduct independent studies; (ii) expert – activists promoting new research agendas and sub‐fields within established scientific disciplines; and (iii) expert – activists acting beyond the limits of the academic community and partnering with social movements. In this review, I argue that much of the existing literature considers expertise as “something” possessed by individuals, and heavily emphasizes the difference between “lay” and “expert” activists. This entails two main theoretical reductionisms: (i) reification of knowledge; and (ii) overlooking the contribution of activism to expertise and vice versa. I propose considering expertise as the property of a network and focusing future research within environmental health conflicts on the co‐emergence and construction of a network of expertise (Eyal 2013) or ethno‐epistemic assemblage (Irwin & Michael 2003) and social movements. Through this symmetrical network approach, we will be able to develop a more consistent theory of the co‐production of activism and expertise, as well as its political implication to fight environmental health injustice.     

Justice in Indonesia: The Social Life of a Momentous Concept

In this article we argue that efforts in Indonesia to improve access to justice for the disadvantaged would greatly benefit from a pragmatic approach that takes local circumstances of custom, values and social relations into account at least as much as legal reform and bureaucratic transparency. We maintain that in post-Suharto Indonesia ‘justice’ can be conceptualised as the inverse of injustice and is manifested in terms of sovereign interests. Ideal justice, such as associated with rule of law implementing programs, assumes a functioning of government and judiciary that might bring about such results. Building on our own research as well as on the articles in this special issue we argue that engaging with the role and meaning of justice should involve solid ethnography of justice-seekers' life-worlds, understanding of the strategies and institutions that provide justice, and paying attention to the networks and interactions that connect actors in an ever moving field.     

Environmental Justice and Social Work Education: Social Workers' Professional Perspectives

Environmental injustice is a growing human rights issue as climate change and environmental degradation rapidly increases. As a social justice problem, it is relevant to the social work profession, yet not integrated into our curricula. This study of 373 social work professionals found that environmental justice is a significant practice issue across broad client populations and that professionals felt unprepared to address it. Qualitative and quantitative data revealed high levels of client exposure to environmental hazards with little power to change it. Respondents reported dissatisfaction with their education to help them understand environmental issues. Moreover, they indicated that they would like to see environmental justice integrated into social work education and better-prepared graduates entering the profession. Implications for practice and education are discussed.     

Practices of exclusion and injustices within social work education

Despite being a major influence, there are few studies investigating the impact of accreditation on the social justice remit of social work education. This article is guided by two questions: What are the social justice responsibilities of professional associations regulating social work education via accreditation? and What contribution can institutional ethnography make to understanding and change in this area? Drawing on a data-subset from a larger institutional ethnography, selected narratives of two informants, a social work student and a social work lecturer, are discussed. These narratives reveal how key documents of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) used to re-accredit social work courses influence how the study and work of the informants happens. Analysis of the narratives and documents bring the textually organised process of the re-accreditation of social work programmes into view. While this article reports on an Australian context, the issues raised concerning social injustice, epistemological equity and the implicit curriculum are relevant for social work education across many parts of the world. The contribution of this article is to recommend institutional ethnography as a research approach to generate understanding and transformation of organisations with social justice objectives, to redress exclusion and injustice.     

Moving beyond class: A critical review of labor‐environmental conflicts from the global south

Popularly referred to as the “Blue‐Green conflicts,” the tensions between labor and environmental movements have received extensive scholarly attention as it exposes the trade‐off between the economy and the environment. The jobs versus the environment trade‐off has been a focal point of tension in the relationship between trade‐unions and green movements across the globe. In this article, I critically review the existing literature on labor and environmental conflicts from a Global South standpoint. The review exposes how the extant literature on labor‐environmental relations almost exclusively focuses on cases and settings in the Global North, thereby centering the process of inquiry entirely around western social contexts and movements. In this article, I demonstrate why the conception of environmentalism as a middle‐class phenomenon within the extant literature is problematic as; (a) it fails to consider the poor and working‐class environmental movements in countries in the Global South, and (b) it completely overlooks the environmental justice movements and other working‐class environmental movements in the Global North itself. The review highlights the need to bring postcolonial movements and settings to the center of sociological analysis to decolonize the research on social movements.     

Working-class ecology and union politics: a conceptual topology

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that Environmental Labour Studies may benefit from incorporating the perspective of environmental justice. We offer a theorization of working-class ecology as the place where working-class communities live and work, being typically affected by environmental injustice, and of working-class environmentalism as those forms of activism that link labour and environmental struggles around the primacy of reproduction. The paper’s theoretical section draws on a social ethnography of working-class ecology in the case of Taranto, a mono-industrial town in southern Italy, which is experiencing a severe environmental and public-health crisis. We show how environmental justice activism since the early 2000s has allowed the re-framing of union politics along new ways of politicizing the local economy. We conclude by offering a conceptual topology of working-class ecology, which situates different labour organizations (confederal, social/community, and rank-and-file unions) according to their positioning in respect to environmental justice.     

Cultivators of Change: Food Justice in Social Work Education

Food security is an important social work issue historically, and social work educators are responsible for teaching a curriculum that ensures social workers advance human rights, social justice, and economic justice. Contemporary food justice work focuses on the intersecting issues of policy, health, social justice, economic development, and the natural environment. The long-term global public health and environmental threats posed by the mainstream food system in combination with increasing poverty and food insecurity have led to questions about the ability of communities to sustain a nutritionally adequate and equitably distributed food supply. This paper provides examples of social work courses, units, and assignments that focus on educating students about food and environmental justice issues. Much of this work is based on service learning, which is an effective pedagogical tool for fostering connections between classroom concepts and practice. Courses that help students understand the contextual environments in their local communities provide optimal learning environments to address social, economic, and environmental injustices in the food system. Food justice, in particular, is one lens by which students can learn about environmental justice issues for application to their future practice.     

Analyzing ethnoracial mobilization

This article examines scholarship about ethnoracial mobilization written by sociologists within the subfields of social movements and race and racism. We situate our synthesis within critiques put forward by other scholars about the treatment of ethnoracial movements within the social movement subfield. Using these critiques as launching points, we find two broad patterns in the literature: (a) a focus on ethnoracial social movements that decenters race, at times treating it as an independent variable and (b) a focus on mobilizations for racial equity that treats race as a dynamic and constructed process. Within the latter focus, we note research that investigates ethnoracial mobilization at the macro‐, meso‐, and micro‐levels. We call for more research on movements that specifically consider the mobilization and construction of ethnoracial identities. In doing so, we provide a conceptual map of the field and make suggestions for how social movement scholars employing distinct theoretical foci can engage in ethnoracial analysis. Finally, we hypothesize why there might be a dearth of research within the social movement subfield that engages in critical analysis of ethnoracial dynamics of social movements.