Review Essay: Framing Environmental Justice

Published date01 December 2007
Date01 December 2007
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/0734016807310669
Subject MatterArticles
Review Essay
Framing Environmental Justice
Understanding the Past, Charting the Future
Robyn R. Mace, Ph.D., CPP
Michigan State University, School of Criminal Justice, East Lansing
Pellow, D. N., & Brulle, R. J. (Eds.). (2006). Power, Justice, & the Environment:
A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, pp. 339
Pellow, D. N. (2002). Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 234
Novotny, P. (2000). Where We Live, Work, and Play: The Environmental Justice
Movement and the Struggle for a New Environmentalism. Westport, CT: Praeger, pp. 115
Environmental concerns increasingly dominate public discourse as globalization, massi-
fication, and evidence of climate change present significant and distributed impacts from
human activity. Environmental justice (EJ) continues to gain recognition and legitimacy
through the variety of mechanisms that constitute the diverse endeavor and an emerging
area of scholarship: public and community organization and action; improved scientific
methods, data collection, and information sharing; and sovereign government (national and
international) actions and funding. As a social justice movement, EJ is one of the youngest
and apparently one of the most successful, judging by its influence on policy and social
organizing (especially with respect to issues framing). As an academic discipline, EJ is in
its adolescence. Like the localized actions that engender the movement, EJ continues to
define itself and clarify its future directions.
Three recent books provide the opportunity to examine the state and development of the
EJ movement and EJ research. David Naguib Pellow and Robert J. Brulle’s edited volume
Power, Justice, and The Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Justice Environmental
Movement (2006) provides a needed theoretical and practical anchor for EJ movement studies
as a scholarly discipline, identifying and reinforcing the origins, goals, and challenges of
EJ research and activism, while articulating specific methods and directions for the future.
David Naguib Pellow’s (2002) Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in
Chicago is a fascinating and critically important analysis of the changing dynamics of
waste, labor, and politics in a rapidly industrializing and developed urban area. Where We
Live, Work and Play by Patrick Novotny (2000) deconstructs the language and activities of
three justice movements to explain how the process of “framing,” interpolation of current
conflicts and realities with shared cultural and historical experiences, influences the forms
of EJ in different communities. Key themes recur in each of these works: the necessity for
and difficulty of collaboration to achieve EJ goals; the fragmentation of EJ movements and
challenges in sustaining and aligning them; general EJ practitioner alienation from main-
stream environmental organizations and (potential) distrust of researchers; and the intricate
415
Criminal Justice Review
Volume 32 Number 4
December 2007 415-422
© 2007 Georgia State University
Research Foundation, Inc.
10.1177/0734016807310669
http://cjr.sagepub.com
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com

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