Week 11 Reflections

Climate Justice, Digital Activism, and Gender, Prof. Frances Roberts-Gregory
By Cormac Madden, 4/1/2019

This week's readings focus on a key aspect of disaster studies and environmental studies, the question of differential vulnerability in both (un)natural disasters and negative environmental effects in general. The topic of differential vulnerabilities is central to environmental justice, a link that is elucidated through the various narratives that I read for this week. Four of these articles explored injustices in the Gulf Coast, analyzing how racism, classism and homophobia led to the sacrificing and marginalization of human bodies and lives. "'That we may live'" by Brian Williams establishes a racist continuum between plantation slavery along the Mississippi and the establishment of pesticide chemical plants in the same regions. In doing so, he presents the rise of Louisiana's petrochemical industry as a clear continuation of the racism of the plantation-slavery economy. In "An Incomplete Solution," Craig Colten also explores Louisiana's petrochemical industry–along with its oil industry– and describes how the Lower Mississippi has been essentially designated as a sacrifice zone because of the tremendous industrial pollution that occurs there. A similar, non-Louisiana example of systematic environmental injustices can be seen in "The Multiple Layers of Environmental Injustice in Contexts of (Un)natural Disasters: The Case of Puerto Rico Post-Hurricane Maria," in which Gustavo Garcia-Lopéz places the devastation of the Hurricane's aftermath within the colonial and economic history of Puerto Rico. 

In "Before the Storm," Seamus Bates explores how disasters, specifically the BP oil spill, can have unforeseen social impacts, such as the integration of long-segregated schools and churches in Plaquemines Parish; as well as exploring the pushback that can arise in response to these reworkings of the social order. Gary Richards also explores how natural disasters rework the social order in "Queering Katrina," using post-Katrina LGBT literature as a window into LGBT experiences and perspectives of the city's destruction.




Key Terms
Differential Vulnerabilities: The consequences of natural disasters disproportionately and differently harm and affect different people and groups as a result of pre-existing social conditions.
Sacrifice Zone: An area that has been designated as expendable for toxic waste or ecological damage. These zones are disproportionately in indigenous, POC, and marginalized communities.

References

Bates, Seamus. 2017. "'Before the Storm': Hurricane Katrina, the BP Oil Spill, and the Challenges to Racial Hierarchies in Rural Louisiana." Nature and Culture 12(1): 65-85. 

Colten, Craig E. 2012. "An Incomplete Solution: Oil and Water in Louisiana." Journal of American History. 

Garcia-Lopéz, Gustavo A. 2018.  "The Multiple Layers of Environmental Injustice in Contexts of (Un)natural Disasters: The Case of Puerto Rico Post-Hurricane Maria." Environmental Justice 11(3): 101-108. 

Richards, Gary. 2010. "Queering Katrina: Gay Discourses of the Disaster in New Orleans." Journal of American Studies, 44(3): 519-534. 

Williams, Brian. 2018. "'That we may live': Pesticides, plantations, and environmental racism in the United States South." Nature and Space 1(1-2): 243-267.