Search

In 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?

The 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?

In 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?

Walsh'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?

This report was published by Human Rights Watch.

Sonja Schmid, PhD is an associate professor in STS at Virginia Tech's National Capital Region Campus. She specializes in science and technology policy, nuclear emergency response, the nuclear industries in the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Dr. Schmid researches how entities, ranging from local municipalities to nation-states, respond in the event of a nuclear emergency. She is not personally involved in the initial emergency response; however, she researchers previous emergency responses and advises on how to reduce the consequences of nuclear disaster. She is also currently working on an NSF-supported project to  "investigate the challenges of globalizing nuclear emergency response," as a part of which, she organized a monthly speaker series that focuses on research and education related to nuclear emergency response.

All above information sourced from http://www.sts.vt.edu/faculty/sschmid/ unless otherwise noted.

This article argues that when examining the spread of disease, fighting biosocial aspects are as important as fighting the biological aspects. The authors argue that structureal violence, which is introduced by inequality leads to premature death and disability. By "resocializing" we can prevent diseases such as TB and AIDS from staying diseases of the poor.

The App pairs translated annotations with their respective sources in a way for viewers to easily access. This information is used to convey the purpose of the source to others who may not speak the language in which the source is written.