Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
inequalities across international borders. I argue that transnational EJ
movement networks do this (1) by disrupting the social relations that
produce environmental inequalities, (2) by producing new accountabili-
ties vis-à-vis nation-states and polluters, and (3) by articulating new
visions of ecologically sustainable and socially just institutions and
societies.
Environmental Sociology and Social Inequalities
In this fi rst section of the chapter I consider sociological theories of
environmental confl ict and link them to theories of social inequality. I
begin with Ulrich Beck's “risk society” thesis, which contends that late
modern society is marked by an exponential increase in the production
and use of hazardous chemical substances, producing a fundamental
transformation in the relationship among capital, the state, civil society,
and the environment. What this means is that the project of nation build-
ing and the very idea of the modern nation-state are undergirded by the
presence of toxins—chemical poisons—that permeate every social insti-
tution, human body, and ecosystem. This toxic modern nation-state also
depends on the subjugation of ecosystems and certain human popula-
tions designated as “others”—those who are less than deserving of full
citizenship. This process attenuates the most negative impacts of such a
system on elites. Toxic production systems produce privileges for a global
minority and externalize the costs of that process to those spaces occu-
pied by devalued and marginal “others”—people of color, the poor,
indigenous communities, and global South nations. The study of such
inequalities, of course, is the foundation of the fi eld of environmental
justice and inequality studies (Agyeman, Bullard, and Evans 2003).
Thus, according to Beck, advanced capitalism creates wealth for some
and imposes risks on others, at least in the short term. In the long run,
however, the problem of widespread global ecological harm ends up
returning to impact its creators in a “boomerang effect.” That is, the
risks of late modernity eventually haunt those who originally produced
them (Beck 1999). In that sense, Beck acknowledges environmental
inequality in the short term, while also maintaining a global, long-range
view of what becomes, to some extent, a democratization of risk. Beck
confi rms the enduring problem of what other scholars have termed the
“metabolic rift”—the disruptions in ecosystems that capitalism produces
because of its inherent tendency to expend natural resources at a rate
that is greater than the ability of ecosystems to replenish those materials
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