Читать книгу Lessons in Environmental Justice - Группа авторов - Страница 20

Stella M. Èapek

PHOTO 2.1: Patsy Oliver, Camille Brown, and Bettye Davis.

Photo by Stella Čapek.

When the Flint, Michigan, water crisis broke into the national news, and stories appeared about low-income African American children being exposed to unusually high levels of lead, the term environmental justice (EJ) was already somewhat familiar to the general public. But in the later part of the 20th century, the concept was still being invented. EJ emerged from a number of different directions, as a way of “framing” (or naming in a new way) a pattern of injustices that disproportionately exposed minority and low-income communities to toxic hazards. Multiple social actors, including social movement activists and scholars, have shaped its evolution. In this chapter, I’ll begin by revisiting an EJ case from my research that dates back to the time when the EJ “frame” was starting to spread through local and national networks (Čapek, 1993). The Carver Terrace case reveals some of those early dynamics and provides an interesting comparison and contrast with present-day EJ activism. I’ll also discuss how I was woken up to the issue of EJ, and how it shaped my research. Then, I’ll focus on “framing” theory as a useful analytical tool, and I’ll reflect on how the EJ frame has evolved over time. Throughout, I’ll draw selectively on the broad and rich field of EJ scholarship, which investigates not only where harm has been done but also how a socially and ecologically just society can be envisioned (see Agyeman, Schlosberg, Craven, & Matthews, 2016). But first, let’s imagine a community named Carver Terrace, a place that no longer exists, whose residents learned about EJ through a persistent struggle to get justice.