Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
In their infl uential topic
Activists beyond Borders
, Keck and Sikkink
(1998) explore the signifi cance of the work of transnational social move-
ment networks. These groups of activists in two or more nations have,
for decades, successfully intervened in and changed the terms of impor-
tant global and national policy debates, pushed for regulation of
activities deemed harmful to social groups, and infl uenced states to
embrace practices that might improve the lives of residents in any given
nation. Transnational movement networks often do this by gathering
critical information and strategically making it available to publics,
governments, media organizations, and other movements in order to
force change. These movement networks also achieve such goals through
mobilizing support for boycotts, letter-writing campaigns, and other
forms of protest that shine a spotlight on objectionable institutional
practices with the goal of halting or transforming them. Transnational
movements frequently take advantage of the multiple geographic scales
at which these networks operate and sidestep the barriers that nation-
states in one locale may create in order to access the leverage available
from within other states—the boomerang. Transnational EJ movements
also use the boomerang to challenge the power that states and corpora-
tions enjoy over vulnerable communities, thus confronting the race,
gender, and class inequalities that produce environmental injustices.
What Goes Around Comes Around
Guinier and Torres underscore the importance of “political race” through
the metaphor of the “miner's canary,” which symbolizes the role of
people of color whose oppression is a sign of a poisonous social atmo-
sphere that ultimately threatens all of society, not just those communities
that suffer directly from racism. That is, racism creates its own boomer-
ang effects that reveal systems of interdependence and accountability that
impact people from all racial and class strata (albeit unevenly). Wars,
revolts, uprisings, and social movements spawned, in part, by demands
for racial, gender, and class justice against systems of oppression are
among the many examples of such a boomerang effect. While mobilizing
the boomerangs of transnational social movements, environmental
justice activist networks also draw on analyses of race, class, and gender
inequality to unmask the drivers of environmental injustice and to frame
a vision of a more sustainable and socially just world.
There are multiple boomerang effects evident in EJ struggles, and
I examine two of them here. The fi rst is the way social movements use
transnational activist networks to leverage power across international
