Recent oceans sustainability, coastal community development, and ocean governance policy discourse among academics and practitioners increasingly invokes “equity” and “ocean equity.” In our conversations with scholars in these diverse fields, we have begun to develop a position that argues that any notion of ocean equity must be engage with and derive its principles from critical environmental justice scholarship. With this list of “must-reads,” we have assembled a group of publications that, we hope, can be a point of departure for your own work at the nexus of concerns for the ocean equity and (critical) environmental justice. In assembling the list, the word “critical” was not just a buzzword, but key to our understanding of this literature. Critical environmental justice involves a mode of thinking that is sensitive to issues of social domination and disenfranchisement. It offers a critique of historical and contemporary socio-economic conditions and inequalities, and it is thus interested in combining diagnosis and action. Referring to this deep intellectual tradition is instructive because it positions environmental justice as much more than just the latest policy paradigm being adopted by NGOs, governments, and titling the call for proposals from funders. The list below follows no particular order, and where possible, we have provided a link where you can find the work. This list is interdisciplinary, drawing from scholars from multiple academic fields.
But this list is not exhaustive. In an attempt to spotlight the academic foundations of the (critical) environmental justice literature, it tends to prioritize works in the American context. What are your “must-reads” at the nexus of oceans and justice research?
Interested in these topics? Most of the Ocean Nexus scholars are teacher-scholars, and we have developed syllabi that you can apply to your own courses here: oceannexus.org/learningforum/syllabus
1. David Naguib Pellow (2017) What is Critical Environmental Justice? John Wiley & Sons.
Perhaps the most widely cited and discussed recent work on the topic, Pellow’s prose is theoretically rich, while providing a series of conventional, but also sometimes surprising case studies that widen and deepen an understanding of what justice means, and how social movements, beyond so-called “collective action” and state sponsorship of policies, might work.
wiley.com/en-us/What+is+Critical+Environmental+Justice%3F-p-9780745679372
2. Julie Sze (2020) Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger. University of California Press.
This short book provides an introduction to environmental justice as social and political movements. The book makes use of a number of American cases of environmental injustice as a means of highlighting the precarity and potential of contemporary environmental justice movements.
ucpress.edu/book/9780520300743/environmental-justice-in-a-moment-of-danger
3. Robert D. Bullard (2018) Dumping in Dixie: Race, class, and environmental quality. Routledge
Originally published in 1990, Robert Bullard is considered the founder of Environmental Justice research, actually spurred by connections with lawyers and activist trying to take back control of their neighborhoods from polluting industries. The contemporary interest in race, class, gender, colonialism, and more in this sub-field, largely begins with Bullard.
4. Dorceta E. Taylor (2016) The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection. Duke University Press.
Dorceta Taylor explores the origin of American Conservation and unpacks the connection between environmental protection and prejudice against racial and ethnic minorities that were (and still are) depicted as the destructive force against ‘Nature.’ Taylor covers wide range of US Nature governance, including development of wildlife regulation, national parks and forest preservation to show how they were distorted by racism and gender discrimination in the name of American nation building.
dukeupress.edu/the-rise-of-the-american-conservation-movement
5. Michael Mascarenhas, ed. (2020) Lessons in Environmental Justice: From Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter and Idle No More. SAGE Publications.
Michael Mascarenhas’ work has spanned numerous issues, including water crises on indigenous lands, impacts of racism in socio-technical systems, and the ongoing legacy of coloniality in international NGO work. Here, he has assembled an accessible text-book of essential readings for students and scholars alike.
us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/lessons-in-environmental-justice/book260893
6. Amelia Moore (2019) Destination Anthropocene: Science and Tourism in the Bahamas. University of California Press.
Amelia Moore’s Destination Anthropocene explores how practices of science and tourism — justified by a need to understand rapid environmental change in the Bahamas (and globally) — shape cultural imaginaries about the places explored by visiting scientists, tourists, and conservationists (which are not mutually exclusive categories). Among other important subjects, this book demonstrates how places like the Bahamas are positioned as places to be documented, explored, and studied by visitors while locals are seen as objects of study.
ucpress.edu/book/9780520298934/destination-anthropocene
7. Jeremy Williams (2021) Climate Change Is Racist: Race, Privilege, and the Struggle for Climate Justice. Icon Books
It has become a fairly common talking point — the effects of climate change might be felt worldwide, but it is marginalized populations that feel climate change most intimately and most severely. In Climate Change is Racist, Jeremy Williams explains how the climate crisis works in conjunction with racialized capitalism to disproportionately expose minoritized communities/nations to environmental risk even as and majority white communities/nations disproportionately contribute to climate change.
iconbooks.com/ib-title/climate-change-is-racist
8. Amalia Leguizamón (2020) Seeds of Power: Environmental Injustice and Genetically Modified Soybeans in Argentina. Duke University Press.
In Seeds of Power, Amalia Leguizamón deploys the tools of EJ theory and methodology to examine rapid agricultural transformation in Argentina driven by the adoption of genetically modified, herbicide-resistant soybeans. In so doing, Leguizamón shines a light on the ways in which agricultural industries, the media, scientists, and the state create “synergies of power” to pursue an extractivist agenda and “create and legitimate human suffering, social inequality, and environmental degradation”’ (p. 3).
*This list was created in partnership between The SEA Lab and Ocean Nexus. The Sustainability, Equity, and Action Laboratory (The SEA Lab) brings international scholars, experts, and practitioners together for research and advocacy. Our collaborative network encourages rigorous investigation of the explicit and tacit modes of social and environmental domination that currently limit our ability to achieve just and sustainable communities. Learn more at thesealab.org.
This blog was edited by Leah Huff.