SfAA Panel: Beyond Environmental Injustice
Essay for the double-panel "Beyond Environmental Injustice", 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, March 22-27, 2021.
Tanya Matthan: environmental justice and epistemic violence
tanyamatthanIn their introduction, Vermeylen's argument for a particularist and decolonial approach to justice through a recognition of plural ontologies and epistemologies that decenters Western liberal discourse and its theory of justice. How does bringing the lens of coloniality into environmental justice literature alter our visions of energy futures? Can we make appeals to environmental justice without recourse to liberal theories of individual rights and property ownership? More specifically, I am wondering how our team can study and address this dynamic plurality of ways of understanding and experiencing in/justice in this site, and how can we engage this plurality in productive ways? What axes of difference and inequality should we be looking for/at (race, gender, class, sexual orientation, citizenship, housing status, etc)? If the Anthropocene is coloniality by another name, how can we foreground this in our approach?
Tanya Matthan: BRT and envt justice
tanyamatthanThe authors productively place three bodies of theory in conversation, abolitionist theories, urban political ecology, and decolonial theory, to rewrite the intellectual trajectories of EJ as extending the legacy of the Black Radical Tradition. What are our intellectual and political genealogies as students and researchers of the quotidian anthropocene? What genealogies are we pushing against? Drawing from their examples of spaces and historical moments of interracial solidarity, what kinds of coalitions do we see ourselves partnering with and contributing to as (largely?) newcomers to the activism in Austin?
Tanya Matthan: envtl politics of reproduction
tanyamatthanIn this fascinating review, the authors show how environmental justice is reproductive justice (following the water protectors at Standing Rock) and how this intersection reshapes understandings of the environment, embodiment, and exposure. I was particularly interested in the concepts of social and cultural re/production, and how we might think about this in light of Austin's rapid gentrification. They discuss an intersectional approach as a multi-scalar approach, from climate change to chemical exposure in the home - and I think this could be extended to a inter/multi-generational approach to justice (esp given our focus on renewables). The authors show how the RJ framework rethinks the individualism of reproductive choice as the right to conceive and bear children in conditions of social justice and human flourishing - then how does the current energy system (and future energy transitions) negate or create these conditions, and for whom? If we think about biological/cultural reproduction, how do we also incorporate the concept of reproductive labor into our analysis? Finally, I think they make an important point about the harms of documentation, and it would be great to hear everyone's thoughts (Esp those who have participated in earlier field campuses) on what the goal and ethics of our knowledge production are?
Tanya Matthan: Walsh and Austin's environmental history
tanyamatthanWalsh's piece gives us a concise history and geography of environmental racism in Austin, by drawing our attention to how ineequality is written into city law and urban planning. The ongoing legacies of segregation have shaped social life from access to public services to access to recreational spaces. Given the foundations of environmental racism in zoning laws and land use regulations, so succinctly highlighted by Walsh, how does/must the process of energy transition address these issues? Can there be zoning for justice, and what would that look like? In what way can our work at the field campus contribute to the existing work being done by orgs like El Pueblo and PODER?
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Sara_NesheiwatI found the testimony of those effected in Liberia to be the most compelling. The personal statements and recountings of the situations that they underwent is what really reinforced the main purpose of the documentary. Seeing footage of people crying in the streets as well as the lack of food and resources, paired with the bodies and caskets is really the most persuasive aspect, in my opinion. It communicated the true devastation that occurred in Liberia during this outbreak.
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Sara_NesheiwatThis article has been cited in one other paper entitled "Documenting Attacks on Health Workers and Facilities in Armed Conflicts" according to Google scholar.
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Sara_NesheiwatThis health registry relies heavily on collaborations and other organizations. There is actually an entire section of the website dedicated to listing all the organizations that collaborate and work together in order to provide this information for the registry. The registry is a collaborative effort between the US Department of Health and Human Services and NYC.
There are 3 advisory groups that work with WTC health Registry, they are the Community Advisory Board, the Labor Advisory Board and the Scientific Advisory Board. The following organizations are also listed as organizations that this registry depends on for research, number and data:
Government
- National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
- Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR)
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Scientific
- Albert Einstein College of Medicine
- Boston University – School of Public Health
- City University of New York – Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy
- City University of New York - Hunter College
- City University of New York - Queens College
- Columbia University - Mailman School of Public Health
- Columbia University – Medical Center
- Columbia University - New York Psychiatric Institute
- Cornell University
- Fire Department of New York City (FDNY) - Bureau of Health Services
- Fordham University
- HHC WTC Environmental Health Center at Bellevue Hospital Center
- Hospital for Special Surgery
- Johns Hopkins University - Bloomberg School of Public Health
- Mount Sinai Medical Center
- New School University
- New York City Police Department - Chief Surgeon's Office
- NYU Medical Center
- New York State Department of Health
- Rutgers University
- San Francisco State University
- State University of New York – Albany – School of Public Health
- State University of New York - Stonybrook
- State University of New York -Stonybrook University Medical Center
- University of California – San Francisco – School of Medicine
- University of Greenwich (United Kingdom)
- Weill Cornell Medicine
Abstract