“BRIDGING THE SOCIAL JUSTICE/ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE DIVIDE: RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS OF LITERATURE, WRITING, ETHNIC & WOMEN’S STUDIES

Metropolitan State UniversityCenter for Teaching & LearningFall Faculty Conference – Sept. 13, 2008“Learning to be Green”Dr. Greta Gaard, Community Faculty in Women’s Studies

STARTING QUESTIONS

What are some social justice issues addressed in your courses?

What can be done about these issues? What have you/your students done?

What environmental issues are (or could be) addressed in your courses?

What can be done about these issues? What have you/your students done?

DRAWING THE NEXUS: ETHICAL CONTENTS AND CONTEXTS

• Hunger• Food costs, quality• War, migrations, struggle

over resources• Police brutality• Prison reform• Terrorism and national

security• Immigration • Marriage rights &

benefits• Housing• Health Care• Women, children, and

welfare

Industrial animal agriculture

Biotechnology, agro-chemicals

Global warming Water quality Healthy forests Species loss Waste sites Desertification Energy production Vivisection Asbestos, lead paints,

heavy metals

Social Justice Environmental

TWO INTERSECTIONAL ANALYSES

• Ecofeminism – starting with the insight that the oppression of women and of nature are interdependent…an analysis that has tended to foreground gender and nature

• Environmental Justice – began by politicizing the co-occurrence of toxic waste & communities of color…an analysis that has tended to foreground race, then class, and defined environment as the places “where we live, work, and play”

ECOFEMINIST MOVEMENT CHRONOLOGY

1980 & 1981 – Women’s Pentagon Actions 1981 – First West Coast Ecofeminist Conference 1982 – Feminists for Animal Rights founded 1983 – Reclaim the Earth: Women Speak Out for

Life on Earth (Caldecott & Leland, eds., England) 1986 – WomanEarth Feminist Peace Institute

founded by Starhawk & Ynestra King 1987 – USC Ecofeminist Conference (papers

published as Reweaving the World, ed. Diamond & Orenstein, in 1990)

1991 – Women’s Environment and Development Organization founded by Bella Abzug & Mim Kelber

1991 – Ecofeminist Visions Emerging (EVE) forms in NYC with Cathleen & Colleen McGuire

ECOFEMINISM: NOTICING DOMINATION BASED ON DIFFERENCE

• Sexism: male over female• Racism: white over black• Classism: wealthy over working class• Heterosexism: heterosexuals over

GLBTQ• Ageism: adult youth over children &

elders• Ableism: temporarily abled over

differently abled • Speciesism: human over other animal

species• Anthropocentrism: culture over nature

ECOFEMINISTS ON CULTURE/NATUREWHATEVER IS DEFINED AS “NATURE” -> SUBORDINATED/RESOURCE FOR “CULTURE”

• Wealthy urban centers commanding water, energy (coal, nuclear, hydro), food resources – privileged consumption

• Struggling rural areas used as resources for urban centers

• Wild environments (forests, rivers, mountains) used as resources (lumber, hydro-power, coal-fired power plants, nuclear power) and as waste depositories

• Third-World countries used as resources for First-World countries

• Indigenous and rural people and their lands exploited as resources for Third-world elites and First-World consumers

ECOFEMINIST CRITIQUE OF THE LOGIC OF DOMINATION--REQUIRES/RELIES ON ALIENATION, HIERARCHY, DOMINATION

• Perspective Valued Self Devalued Other

• Speciesism Human animals Nonhuman animals

• Sexism Men Women• Racism Whites People of Color• Classism Wealthy Working Class / Poor• Heterosexism Heterosexuals GLBTQ• Ageism Adult Youth Young & elders• Ableism Temporarily abled Differently abled• Anthropocentrism Culture Nature

Urban RuralCivilized Wild

• Feminism & • Animal Rights* Reason Emotion,

empathy

*Marjory Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery*Carol Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat*Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her*Greta Gaard, Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature*Josephine Donovan & Carol Adams, The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: RESPONDING TO ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM, DEFINED AS

The deliberate targeting of communities of color for toxic waste disposal and the siting of polluting industries:Radioactive waste on Native landsLandfills and hazardous wastes in African

American and Latino communitiesBanned pesticides exported to Third WorldToxic labor conditions for farmworkers,

maquila workers, sweatshop workersEconomic extortion: want jobs/income?...

ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM IN NATIVE NORTH AMERICA Over 700 Native nations on North America

317 reservations in the U.S. threatened by env. Hazards, toxic wastes, clearcuts

Colonization & Env. Racism on Native lands Siting of toxic wastes (nuclear waste dumps) Power generation

Hydro – James Bay I & II, Hydro-Quebec Nuclear power & nuclear waste

Nevada Test Site & Western Shoshone Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant – NSP Yucca Mountain – nation’s dumpsite for nuclear

waste Coal – Northern Cheyenne & AMAX

Militarization – Hawai’i

EVENTS LEADING TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT

1982 – Warren County, NC predominantly black and poor residents oppose a polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) disposal landfill in their community.

1987 – Toxic Wastes and Race, a study commissioned by the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice Correlating waste facility sites and

demographics, the study found race was the most powerful variable predicting location.

Other variables were poverty, land values, and home ownership.

1991 – First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit – 4 days in Washington D.C.

1991 FIRST NATIONAL PEOPLE OF COLOR ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERSHIP SUMMIT(2ND SUMMIT IN 2002)

Broadened the EJ movement beyond the anti-toxics focus to include Public health Worker safety Land use Transportation Housing Resource allocation Community empowerment

Built a multi-racial grassroots movement around environmental & economic justice

Created a 17-point “Principles of Environmental Justice” http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/princej.html

THE VISION OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE Equal access to natural resources

Universal human right to clean air and water, adequate health care, affordable shelter, safe workplaces

Requires eliminating institutional racism and classism that results in locating toxic waste in poor & minority

communities, unsafe workplaces (pesticides in the fields,

chemicals and radiation in the factories), and women’s disadvantaged position in the

workforce (leading to reproductive hazards in the workplace)

Requires restructuring of the entire social order

BRINGING THESE INTERSECTIONAL PERSPECTIVES TO THE DISCIPLINES

English: Literature, Composition, Creative Writing, Rhetoric

Ethnic Studies Women’s Studies

Course Content & Course Contexts Experiential learning Service learning Community education

RESOURCES FOR LITERATURE & WRITING

Ecocriticism

http://www.asle.org/ http://www.asle.org/

site/resources/ecocritical-library/

Ecocriticism Reader. Ed. Glotfelty & Fromm, 1996.

Ecofeminist Literary Criticism. Ed. Gaard & Murphy, 1998.

Ecocomposition Dobrin, S. & C. Weisser. Ecocomposition:Theoreti

cal & Pedagogical Approaches (2001).

Natural discourse: Toward Ecocomposition. (2002)

Writing Environments (2005).

Course Readers (next slide)

ECOCOMPOSITION COURSE READERS

Chris Anderson & Lex Runciman, A Forest of Voices, 2nd ed. (McGraw-Hill, 2000)

Lorraine Anderson, Scott Slovic, and John O'Grady, eds. Literature and the Environment (Longman, 1998)

Terrell Dixon & Scott Slovic, eds., Being in the World: An Environmental Reader for Writers (Longman, 1992)

Sid Dobrin, Saving Place: An Ecocomposition Reader (McGraw-Hill, 2004)

Melissa Walker, Reading the Environment (W.W. Norton, 1994)

RESOURCES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL RHETORIC Coppola, Nancy W., & Bill Karis, eds. Technical Communication,

Deliberative Rhetoric, and Environmental Discourse: Connections and Directions. ATTW/Ablex, 2000.

  DeLuca, Kevin Michael. Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of

Environmental Activism. Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005.  Fill, Alwin, and Peter Mulhausler, eds. Ecolinguistics Reader: Language,

Ecology, and Environment. Continuum, 2001.  Herndl, Carl G. and Stuart C. Brown, eds. Green Culture: Environmental

Rhetoric in Contemporary America. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.)

  Killingsworth, M. Jimmie and Jacqueline S. Palmer. Ecospeak: Rhetoric

and Environmental Politics in America. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1992.)

Waddell, Craig, ed. Landmark Essays on Rhetoric and the Environment. (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998.) .

RESOURCES FOR ETHNIC STUDIES / ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE• Southwest Network for

Economic and Env. Justice http://www.sneej.org/

• Center for HealthEnv. & Justice http://www.chej.org/

• Southwest Organizing Project http://www.swop.net/

• Indigenous Env. Network http://www.ienearth.org/

Environmental Justice Resource Center @ Clark Atlanta Univ.

http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/EJ Resources (MI)http://www.mapcruzin.com/environmental_justice.htm

Nat’l Black EJ Networkhttp://www.nbejn.org/ EJ & Climate Changehttp://www.ejcc.org/

KEY TEXTS ON ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and

Communities of Color (R.D. Bullard 1997) The Environmental Justice Reader: Politics,

Poetics, Pedagogy (Joni Adamson, Mei Mei Evans, Rachel Stein, eds., 2002)

New Perspectives on Environmental Justice: Gender, Sexuality, and Activism (Rachel Stein, ed., 2004)

Power, Justice, and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement (D.N. Pellow & R.J. Brulle, 2005)

Mexican Americans & the Environment: Tierra y Vida (Devon Pena 2005)

Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry (Hightower et al, 2006)

Resisting Global Toxics: Transnational Movements for Environmental Justice (D.N. Pellow, 2008)

RESOURCES FOR WOMEN’S STUDIES

Eve Online: http://eve.enviroweb.org/ Women’s Environment and Development Institute

http://www.wedo.org Introductory bibliography to Ecofeminism

http://womenst.library.wisc.edu/bibliogs/ecofem.html

Activist-educative hub for ecofeminism http://www.ecofem.org/

Eastern Shore Sanctuary & Education Center http://www.bravebirds.org/

Boston Ecofeminist Action http://www.geocities.com/bostonecofem/

Women’s Voices for the Earth http://www.womenandenvironment.org/

GREEN EDUCATION RESOURCES

Second Nature: education for sustainability http://www.secondnature.org/index.htm

MN Next Step for Education http://www.nextstep.state.mn.us/section.cfm?topic=16

Upper Midwest Association for Campus Sustainability http://www.umacs.org/

ECOFEMINIST & EJ SERVICE LEARNING (MN) Environmental Justice Associates of MN

http://www.ejamn.org/ (site under construction)

MN Center for Environmental Advocacy http://www.mncenter.org/

MN Environmental Partnership http://www.mepartnership.org/

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy http://www.iatp.org/

Organic Consumers Association http://www.organicconsumers.org/index.htm

SEEK MN Home for Environmental Education http://www.seek.state.mn.us/res_dir.cfm

Women’s Environmental Institute http://www.w-e-i.org/

Fresh Energy http://www.fresh-energy.org/

WHY “GREEN” EDUCATION?

There’s an urgent need for ecological, economic, and social justice on all levels:

Interspecies Ecological Social (inclusive of all human diversities) Economic International

What’s the alternative?

Ppt. available at http://gretagaard.efoliomn2.com/