Читать книгу Lessons in Environmental Justice - Группа авторов - Страница 26

When I first encountered framing theory, theories of social movements had become very focused on “resource mobilization,” or the so-called nuts and bolts of organizing—leadership and organizational skills, fundraising, mobilizing constituents, and the like. Although these are important, the equally significant issues of symbolic meaning and identity had taken a back seat. Noticing this gap, sociologist David Snow and his collaborators developed a theory of framing that focused on the social construction of meaning and its links to social action. They defined frames as “‘schemata of interpretation’ that enable individuals ‘to locate, perceive, identify, and label’ occurrences within their life space and the world at large. By rendering events or occurrences meaningful, frames function to organize experience and guide action, whether individual or collective” (Snow, Rochford, Worden, & Benford, 1986, p. 464). In other words, interpretive frames serve the dual purpose of constructing meaning and offering strategies for action. Just like a frame around a picture, meaningful frames highlight certain elements of reality and affect how we look at (and act in) the world. A successful frame must “resonate,” that is, it has to ring true and feel authentic to those who embrace it, individually and collectively.

Snow and Benford (1988) identified three types of “core framing tasks”: diagnostic framing (analyzing a problem and identifying its causes); prognostic framing (envisioning plans for a solution); and motivational framing (providing a motive for action). Any viable social movement, they argue, needs to perform these framing tasks to mobilize supporters. To address an injustice, we try to figure out who (or what—but there is always a “who,” as Lois Gibbs pointed out) is causing it and what we can do to change it. To actually change it, you have to believe that it’s possible and that you should take action. As Carver Terrace residents found out, this is much easier if you aren’t facing the problem alone; connecting with others provides experience, motivation, and courage to carry out all three framing tasks. You need courage when you challenge a powerful social hierarchy built around inequalities of gender, race, class, and more. Adopting a collective action frame is also often linked to a reframing of personal identity. The #MeToo movement and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement (BLM) provide excellent examples of powerful collective action frames that are also deeply personal. The same can be said about the EJ frame.

Importantly, frames don’t just automatically “snap into place.” Social movement scholar Aldon Morris (1986) reminds us that the nonviolent protest frame, for which the civil rights movement is so well known, was initially not widely embraced by African Americans in the South, who saw being unarmed in the face of armed opponents as a potential death sentence. Successful framing is always a product of meaningful social interaction. Also, framing is not a purely rational process. Rather, an injustice frame is frequently connected to a strong sense of “moral outrage,” “a ‘hot’ cognition…that is emotionally charged” (Taylor, 2000, p. 511). A resonant frame channels emotions in a particular direction. The polarization in the United States during the Trump presidency illustrates all too well the competing frames that resonate among his supporters and opponents, amplified by social media networks.

Framing has multiple purposes: presenting issues to the public (for example, presenting climate change in a convincing way); emphasizing certain collective strategies among a movement’s own participants and supporters (for example, validating direct action protest as the best choice); and influencing the social construction (reframing) of personal identity (for example, coming to see oneself as an EJ activist).

Framing theory has greatly influenced my work. I wrote that “‘[e]nvironmen-tal justice’ can be understood as a conceptual construction, or interpretive ‘frame’ (Snow et al., 1986), fashioned simultaneously from the bottom up (local grass-roots groups discovering a pattern to their grievances) and from the top down (national organizations conveying the term to local groups)” (Čapek, 1993, p. 5). This is what I saw happening in Carver Terrace and nationwide during a time when the language of EJ was surfacing. Besides exploring the EJ frame more generally, I wanted to pay attention to the everyday experience of residents in contaminated communities and what environmental justice meant to them. Carver Terrace was a microcosm of this search for justice, with similarities to (and of course differences from) other communities. My research suggested at least five consistent EJ frame dimensions: (1) the right to accurate information; (2) the right to a prompt, respectful, and unbiased hearing; (3) the right to democratically participate in deciding the future of the contaminated community; (4) the right to compensation from those who inflicted injuries; and (5) commitment to solidarity with victims of toxic contamination in other communities. Are these dimensions still relevant? I will say a bit more about this later in the chapter, as we consider the past, present, and future of the EJ frame.