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- Convenors:
-
Manuela Tassan
(University of Milano-Bicocca)
Luca Rimoldi (Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Environment
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 23 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
This panel aims to investigate the relationship between environment and social equality in times of climate and pandemic crises. Rules, conflicts, and new forms of political participation will be analyzed through a concept of environmental justice reinterpreted in an anthropological key.
Long Abstract:
What does it mean to break the rules when denial policies regarding pandemics or climate change exacerbate the socio-environmental fragility of some contexts? How are "racial", class and gender differences intertwined with environmental injustices, and how do they amplify inequalities? How can "environmental racism" affect the struggles for the rights of vulnerable individuals and communities? How are the rules underlying the relationships between humans and the non-human world reshaped in times of global crisis? What space is outlined today for an environmental struggle sensitive to the demands of social justice? How are socio-environmental conflicts changing? What new challenges are opening up in waste management? How do we rethink the relationship between local communities and global infrastructures? How are the struggles to safeguard common goods carried out? What link is there between the different forms of food activism and socio-environmental justice? All these questions call for a reflection on the connection that the environmental dimension has with the dynamics of power and the possibilities of political participation of subjects aspiring to greater social equity.This panel aims to address these issues through the theoretical legacy offered by a concept of environmental justice updated in the light of the new challenges posed by the Anthropocene and reinterpreted in an anthropological key. This panel accepts theoretical and ethnographic contributions reflecting on socio-environmental (in)justice adopting a critical perspective on the ontological boundaries between the human and non-human worlds, the notions of nature and environment, the local knowledge involved in identity struggles, and the multispecies approaches.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 23 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to offer a theoretical framework for a renewed reflection on socio-environmental justice from an anthropological point of view. Special attention will be devoted to the conceptualization of categories such as nature, environment, and territory.
Paper long abstract:
The field of environmental justice appeared at a crossroads of social movements, public policy, and academic research between the 1980s and the early 1990s (Sze, London 2008). It was mainly developed by political scientists, geographers, environmental historians and sociologists. They focused their attention on the unequal distribution of environmental risks and damage (environmental bads) within American society, denouncing the greater exposure of the Afro-descendant community to toxic waste pollution compared with the rest of the population (Schlosberg 2013). Over time this perspective has become globalized, including in the reflection also the territorial struggles of the so-called "traditional peoples” (Carruthers 2008).
This paper aims to explore the contribution that contemporary anthropology can offer to the theoretical framework of environmental justice, especially with respect to, on the one hand, the conceptualization of some foundational categories, such as nature, environment and territory, and, on the other hand, the way of conceiving the relationship between humans/non-humans. Adopting an anthropological and ethnographical approach, I aim to underline the importance of a reflection on the ecological crisis in the Antropocene era focused on a notion of socio-natural inequalities that is not interpreted from a merely distributive point of view.
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyzes the laws, conflict and political participation in the Sundarbans Reserve Forest through the lens of environmental justice reinterpreted in anthropological studies.
Paper long abstract:
This paper analyzes the laws, conflict and political participation in the Sundarbans Reserve Forest through the lens of environmental justice reinterpreted in anthropological studies. Going beyond the nature-culture distinction, it includes nonhumans and the bio-physical entities in the common-world, and takes environment as intrinsically entangled and co-evolving with the society. Upon drawing anthropological literature, the paper seeks to critically examine the environment related laws in India and the indigenous people’s engagement with them. It explains the way the indigenous people of Sundarbans Reserve Forest do now subsist ‘between two fires’ - climate change and the forest conservation policies, and subsequently organizing protest over environmental injustices. On the other, it also explains how the rules underlying the relationship between humans and nonhumans are being reshaped in times of climate change. The question arises how the environment related polices are considering the rights of nonhumans. Do these policies reflect new anthropological understanding of environment? The paper uses the ethnographic material collected during the period of 2018-2019 on the issues of socio-environmental (in)justices that the indigenous people are facing in a few villages of Indian Sundarbans. Reinterpreting the ontological boundaries between humans, nonhumans and the physical entities, it reveals the way the local people who are contesting the governmental policies for environmental justices, as well as, the people in power would conceptualize the environment and the rights of nonhumans.
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the linkages between environmental justice, energy justice and energy rights. Basing on an ethnographic case from Chiapas, it analyses an alternative theorization of a human right to electricity access, where electricity is a part of “Mother Earth” and a non-marketable entitlement
Paper long abstract:
Emerged less than a decade ago, the field of energy justice has been rapidly evolving and has already proven itself as a valuable framework to address distributive, procedural and recognition types of justice in the context of a variety of energy-related issues. Although it shares many assumptions and concerns with both environmental and climate justice, some scholars have also stressed its peculiarities and thus originality. First, energy justice recognizes that although low-income communities from developing countries have contributed little to climate change, they bear its negative consequences disproportionately. Second, it highlights how these communities represent “sacrifice zones” as they are likely to experience the impacts of large-scale energy developments, regardless if renewable or not. Third, energy justice stresses the importance of participation in decision-making as a way to foster energy democracy, by recognizing affected stakeholders and communities a decisive role in the processes that concern energy access and management. In this paper, we focus on the right to electricity access. We present the ethnographic case of “Luz y Fuerza del Pueblo”, a civil resistance movement established in Chiapas, Mexico, that struggles for universal access to electricity. We illustrate the activists’ non-commodified view of nature and the role of custodian of the cosmos they attribute to humanity. We explain how these elements represent the foundation of an “alternative” theorization of a human right to electricity access, one that considers electricity both a part of “Mother Earth” and an entitlement that cannot be marketable.