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Afrofuturism

Misria

Sylvia Wynter (2003) suggests that our current struggles in Western colonized society regarding racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, ethnicism, climate change, environmental destruction, and the unequal distribution of resources are rooted in what she argues is the overrepresentation of the descriptive statement of Man as human, which only recognizes white, wealthy, able-bodied, heterosexual men as "human." As such, just as I argue Black feminist writers and scholars have drawn on speculative methods and Afrofuturism, the use of twentieth-century technology and speculative imagination to address issues within Black and African diasporic communities (see Dery & Dery, 1994), to insist on and explore the full humanity of Black girls, women, and femmes, so too have Black and African diasporic scholars called on Afrofuturism to imagine new ways technology and traditional knowledge practices can address environmental injustice. Suékama (2018) argues that as a form of resistant knowledge building and theorizing, an Afrofuturist approach to environmentalism “integrates speculation with the ecological and scientific, and the spiritual or metaphysical'' to make our environmental justice less European, male, human, (and I would add capitalist) centered. Thus, an Afrofuturist approach to environmental injustice asks us to think about our collective struggle for environmental justice as a part of and connected to other forms of systemic oppression rooted in the rejection of African diasporic and Indigenous people and their knowledge practices through the overrepresentation of Man as human in Western society. In this way, a speculative and Afrofuturist approach to environmental injustice draws on African diasporic knowledge practices in conjunction with modern and traditional technologies to imagine new solutions to environmental injustice that center the needs, values, and traditional practices of African diasporic people.

Peterson-Salahuddin, Chelsea. 2023. "An Afrofuturist Approach to Unsettling Environmental injustice." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

Lack of coverage and training for environmental journalism in Germany

tschuetz

"What does the lack in prominence of environmental coverage in German TV tell us about the general state of environmental journalism in Germany? It is almost impossible to draw con- clusions based on hard facts and numbers.There is no national organization of professionals in the media dealing with this topic like the Society of Environmental Journalists in the USA, for instance.That means there are also no statistics about how many editors, reporters, or producers would count themselves as environmental journalists; nobody is keeping track. Communications scholars, when asked about the number of environmental journalists in Germany, reply with: “That’s something I would also like to know; tell me if you find out.”There is no formal educa- tion, and only a few training opportunities are offered for established writers and editors who want to specialize in the field. In recent years, some well-qualified and experienced reporters on newspapers with influential voices have departed (or been made to depart) the publishing houses or even journalism per se, leaving a noticeable gap." (Schrader 2020)


"Summarizing, environmental journalism in Germany appears to be in a transition phase. Many traditional media and press outlets are struggling to keep their business model or find a new one. And reporting on air quality, biodiversity, or the climate beyond their often-superficial implications for national politics is not high on the list of priorities. Much of the work might be shifting to online publishing in new contexts and organizations, but those are still forming and far from settled."