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.