BIO 2313 - Environmental Justice and Sustainability

Credits: 3 hrs

This class will examine critical perspectives on social justice and geography through the lens of struggles for environmental justice and sustainability. This course begins from the premise that all people have the right to live, work, and play in environments free from toxins, pollution, and other hazards. Drawing on Professor Tom Perreault’s generative framing, we will “question why, and through what social, political, and economic processes, some people are denied this basic right.” The objective is to answer this animating question through a rigorous examination of the environment justice (EJ) movement that began in Warren County, North Carolina. Leaders in the EJ movement use an intersectional framework to illustrate how capitalist production, structural racism, and socio-economic class interlock to make low-wealth communities of color more vulnerable to a range of environmental injustices. Sustainability, which seeks to promote development and lifestyles that are “green, profitable, and fair”, has the potential to overcome these challenges. Potentially, resulting in a more just and sustainable future for all. Framed through a transdisciplinary approach, this course employs a range of critical reading strategies to question and unpack how notions of ” the environment,” race, class, justice, place, sustainability, power, and resistance are configured, disputed, and (re)articulated through the prism of the state, civil society, and social movements. Cross-listed as GEO 2313