Jigsaw #3:Transcorporeality and the

Science of Environmental Justice

This week: Which

communities of people are primarily targeted by environmental injustices

How Why Yet how everyone

is targeted to some degree

This week: 1. Di Chiro, “Producing Roundup

Ready Communities” 2. Edwards, “Radiation, Tobacco &

Illness in Point Hope, Alaska” 3. Carson, Silent Spring 4. Steingraber, “View From the Top” 5. Malkan, Not Just a Pretty Face

Stacy Alaimo

Reflection #8 Alaimo recounts

McWhorter’s story (254) about how she came to the conclusion that not only were Doritos unfit fuel for her compost bin, but also for her own body. How does this example illustrate Alaimo’s conception of “trans-corporeality”?

Transcorporeality: material transing between bodies

“traffic in toxins reveals the interconnections between various movements, such as…environmental heath, occupational health, labor movements, environmental justice, ecological medicine disability rights, green living, anti-globalization, consumer rights, and child welfare” (260)

Toxic Bodies

So while they’re “not something to celebrate,” toxins do force us to

acknowledge local & global interdependencies

Environmental Justice “Environmental hazards are inequitably

distributed in the U.S., with poor people and people of color bearing a greater share of pollution than richer and white people” (Cole & Foster, 10).

Distinguished by mainstream environmentalism by gender, race, class composition

Nature as community: the place you live, work, and play…not some far-off, pristine & inaccessible wilderness reserve

Community as mixed species assemblages

“When I read that we lose 15-20,000 species of plants and animals a year through the logging, ranching and mining that escalates rainforest destruction, my mind immediately begins to ponder how to possibly calculate the number of songs, myths, words, ideas, artifacts, techniques—all the cultural knowledges and practices lost per year in these mega-diversity zones….

…Massive wisdom, variations on human being in the form of knowledge in and of place: these are co-casualties in the eco-catastrophe. Eco-thinout may proceed at a rate much slower than cultural rubout, but accomplishment of the latter is a particularly effective way to accelerate the former. The politics of ecological and aesthetic co-evolution and co-devolution are one” (Feld in Di Chiro, “Nature as Community,” 317).

Environmental Justice: beginnings…

Native American struggles against colonization over 500 years

United Farm Workers’ struggle against pesticide poisoning, 1960s

1968: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. : solidarity with striking garbage workers in Memphis

1970s: President Carter declares Love Canal, NY, disaster zone & evacuates residents

Warren County, NC 1982: African American protests against toxic garbage dump

Tributaries: civil rights, anti-toxics, academia, Native American activism, labor movement, environmentalists

Environmental Justice: important dates

1987: Rev. Benjamin Chavis coins “Environmental racism”

1990: Dr. Robert Bullard publishes Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class & Environmental Quality

1991: First National People of Color Environmental Justice Leadership Summit• 17 Principles of Environmental Justice

1992: EJ Act does not pass Congress 1992: EPA establishes Office on Enviro-Equity 1994: President Clinton issues Executive order

to address EJ in minority & low-income populations

Dr. Robert Bullard

Environmental Climate Justice