Abstract
Although hardly new, our current political climate has brought the specter of American injustice more explicitly into the public eye. The Black Lives Matter Movement, the Flint water crisis, the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the various marches on Washington, among others, demonstrate the clear links between humans, nonhuman nature, and justice/equality. Now, then, is a critical moment for the field of environmental studies and sciences to evaluate how we “look outward” at the topics we study and “look inward” at how we conduct our ourselves and our work. Environmental studies and sciences (ESS) purportedly brings a transdisciplinary/multidisciplinary approach to research by linking the arts, humanities, social, and physical sciences in pursuit of more just socioecological outcomes. However, a cursory reflection on the field suggests continued disciplinary divisions that sort the nonhuman and human world into more-or-less distinct and sometimes problematically immutable categories. Further, manuscript discussion sections typically mix in issues of justice and equality ad hoc, rather than explicitly building them into research design and practice. In this article, we argue that feminist theory, and in particular theories of intersectionality, can critique and strengthen the ESS agenda by reforming current practice. Specifically, we draw on intersectionality to reframe how we organize the work we do (looking inward) and how we ask research questions (looking outward). We then use this theoretical framework to suggest how intersectional diversity can inform our future research programs, making the field more poised to meet the complex challenges of global environmental change.
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Notes
Although were unable to locate any content analyses of discussion sections of ESS manuscripts to document the point about issues of justice and equality being included in manuscripts in an ad hoc fashion, several other recent reviews are telling. First, an analysis of the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, for example, shows that while there is a near balance of female (46%) and male authors (54%) who published in the journal during the last 6 years, most of the books reviewed in the journal were authored by men (68%) (Downie et al. 2017). The authors of that analysis did not examine other demographic features of authors, but one can surmise based on the racial and ethnic diversity of the field that the majority of authors were White. Dade and Hassenzahl’s content analysis of how organizations communicate sustainability through their websites revealed that a large percentage of studied institutions only consider environmental components of sustainability, “which may limit participation and exclude individuals who are more interested in social or economic aspects of sustainability” (2013, 262). In the context of the natural sciences, Rudd’s recent analysis of ocean research abstracts demonstrates that there is some “general support for the idea that ecologically oriented ocean research was in the midst of a ‘social turn’” from 2006 to 2013, which might imply greater attention to social justice issues related to ocean research (2017, n.p.). Although “social concerns” were mentioned in 2014–2015 abstracts significantly more than 2006–2013 (Z score 21.2; 1% significance level), they still appeared far less than “environmental challenges” and “environmental effects of fishing,” for example, and the subcategory of “justice and fairness” occurred in an even smaller number of articles.
As part of a discussion about the salience of intersectionality for the environmental studies and sciences, it is imperative that we briefly discuss our own positionalities to acknowledge that our own “daily activities or material, lived experiences structure [our] understandings of the social world,” (Hesse-Biber 2007, 10), which is a foundational epistemological commitment of feminist work (Mattos and Xavier 2016). Dr. Lloro-Bidart is a White, cis-gendered, able-bodied, middle class female professor at a large public university in southern California where she teaches interdisciplinary courses in animal, food, and environmental studies to a highly diverse student body. In her research, she uses intersectionality as a theoretical paradigm to examine the intersections of gender, ability, race, and species oppressions. Dr. Finewood is a White, cis-gendered, able-bodied, middle class male professor at an average sized private university in New York. He teaches courses in water, human/nonhuman relations, and urban environments. In his research, he uses political ecology to explore the intersection of race, class, and environmental perception and decision-making
For an exception, see Mies and Shiva (1993).
Although most contemporary scholars recognize the intellectual lineage of intersectionality in Black feminist and multiracial feminist activism, theory, and thought, Bilge (2013) notes that some White feminists have co-opted intersectionality, erasing its roots in Black feminism and downplaying the salience of race in analyses of oppression. Our aim here is to both acknowledge the work of Black feminists and to use intersectionality as a critical theoretical framework in ESS to question both what/whom we study and how we conceptualize/organize our research projects, many of which operate along the axes of race, gender, and other social categories where power relationships are incredibly salient.
For an exceptional resource related to avoiding the “Oppression Olympics” and fostering solidarity, see Hancock’s The Politics of Intersectionality: Solidarity Politics for Millennials (2011).
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Lloro-Bidart, T., Finewood, M.H. Intersectional feminism for the environmental studies and sciences: looking inward and outward. J Environ Stud Sci 8, 142–151 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-018-0468-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-018-0468-7