Emotional impacts of environmental decline: What can Native cosmologies teach sociology about emotions and environmental justice?

This article extends analyses of environmental influences on social action by examining the emotions experienced by Karuk Tribal members in the face of environmental decline. Using interviews, public testimonies, and survey data we make two claims, one specific, the other general. We find that, for Karuk people, the natural environment is part of the stage of social interactions and a central influence on emotional experiences, including individuals’ internalization of identity, social roles, and power structures, and their resistance to racism and ongoing colonialism. We describe a unique approach to understanding the production of inequality through disruptions to relationships among nature, emotions, and society. Grief, anger, shame, and hopelessness associated with environmental decline serve as signal functions confirming structures of power. The moral battery of fear and hope underpins environmental activism and resistance. More generally, we expand this concern to argue that neglecting the natural world as a causal force for “generic” social processes has limited not only work on Native Americans, but also work sociology of emotions and theories of race and ethnicity, and has masked the theoretical significance of environmental justice. Taking seriously the experiences of Native people and the importance of the natural environment offers an opportunity to extend sociological analyses of power and to move sociology toward a more decolonized discipline.