For me, issues of environmental (in)justice are at the very core of why studying Environmental Studies is important, relevant, and urgent. Although justice is perhaps just another “big word” that has huge implications yet is difficult to pin down a definition, injustices can be very tangible. They can be measured in parts per million in air, water, soil. They can be diagnosed by medical practitioners and created by human manipulation of landscapes. They can be observed statistically and aesthetically.
In my concentration/area of interest, I was having a hard time connecting landscape narratives of wilderness, tourism, and the sublime to environmental issues apart from policy and philosophy. My “instrumental questions” which are supposed to ask “what should be done?” are essentially descriptive and evaluative questions with instrumental implications. Before last week, I too thought of environmental justice as a predominately urban problem tied to racialized demographics. However, as we were assigned to bring in our own examples of environmental justice to class, I wondered what research was out there about environmental justice concerns in my situated context. A simple JSTOR search produced several examples, written about more fully here.
This felt like a watershed moment for my concentration (and I suppose eventually for my thesis). No longer were all of my sources from collections on wilderness philosophy or historical textbooks about tourism. I have been struggling to justify studying wilderness as a sort of monument to maleness, whiteness, and upper-middle-classness when there are pressing cases of environmental injustice with horrific consequences for marginalized populations. Of course, finding two papers on environmental injustice related to my concentration does NOT counter the overwhelming whiteness/maleness/middle-classness of wilderness. Not all injustices are equal. Returning to the comparison of #BlackLivesMatter and the Malheur occupation, the right to graze ones cattle seems to be less pressing than the right to not be murdered by the police. Creating a hierarchy of injustice, however, is a dangerous game. I am curious to see how my further reading and research will place and categorize the injustices occurring in the rural American Northwest in my own beliefs. I do know that moving forward, issues if justice are an important frame and focus for my thesis. I am closer to understanding why I am so compelled to study wilderness designations and the implications for the surrounding communities
At Lewis & Clark, discussions of race have been at the forefront of current discourse and institutional conversation. For more information regarding specific details about the discussions of race on campus, see here. During our discussions about environmental injustice last week in class, topics of race permeated nearly every case study and conversation. We read an article by Anna Stubblefield regarding race and essentialism, spent a good amount of time pondering Beyonce’s recent “Formation” song and music video, and discussed the current injustice of poisonous water in Flint, Michigan. Although issues of race sometimes become contained within one class or one week of a course, environmental studies has a unique position to recognize its racial implications and opportunities for anti-racism within its many facets. Just as I realized that justice concerns are an important frame for my own work and research, I can see how justice and race are explicit and implicit in many of the various interests of my classmates.