Course objectives:
Climate change is producing global, but also local, changes that can no longer be ignored. Some of these effects are obvious because they affect us directly. Vulnerable communities are the most affected by climate change, and this is no accident. Despite the fact that vulnerability is an important issue in institutional discourse, public strategies and policies (global, nationally and locally), in practice, these communities often end up in an even more acute state of vulnerability. How do we sociologists look at this phenomenon? Which communities are most affected and what are those concrete phenomena that affect (and how do they affect) these communities? These are some of the questions we will try to answer this semester.
In this course you will familiarize with concepts in the area of environmental justice. We will discuss the social, political and economic factors that facilitate this phenomenon and the groups most affected.
Together we will also analyze the effects that environmental injustice has on communities and individuals and the ways in which the movement to counteract this phenomenon was born, functions and develops.
We will discuss the research tools that sociology uses for research in this area and how, concretely, sociology contributes to reducing inequalities in the area of environmental inequalities.
Learning objectives:
Understand the political, social and economic factors in social justice;
Understanding the effects that global warming is having on vulnerable communities;
Documenting environemtal problems and proposing solutions, focues on environmental justice.
Course requirements:
There are no minimum course attendance requirements to enter the exam. However, I am counting on your collaboration so that the course is interactive and we build the content together.
The assessment is composed of:
The assessment is composed of:
1 point by default
6 points final project (including delivering intermediary assignments for the project)
3 points for your activity in the course (involvement in discussions during the meetings)
Seminar activity = relevant interventions in our discussions and going through the texts we will discuss in the meetings. It is highly appreciated if you further research study cases/examples that are relevant to the topic presented in the texts.
Final exam = the final exam will be in the form of an oral examination. You should present the research project/proposal of public policy developed along the semester. For those of you who attended less than 5 courses, you will also receive questions from the content discussed within the meetings.
Final paper: to pe updated (please, bear with me one more week).
MORIS: along the semestre you will have to build up towards a public policy relevant to the course. You will be having weekly assignments that will consist of parts of this document. The process will follow the steps that one should take in order to formulate a public policy. In order to offeer you support, I will upload templates for some of the assignments.
The public policy proposed can be designed for local/national or european authorities. It should have in the centre an environmental problem. Ideally, an environmental problem.
CDPSET: we will be working this semester with Asociația Parcul Natural București. They need a research on young population's perception on urban nature. We will be all delivering this research (both quantitative and qualitative research). The report will be publicly launched. We will be conducting interviews, organizing focus groups and design/process questionnaires.
Week 1:
Organizational matters, presentation of course topics. What is environmental justice and why are we interested in it?
Week 2:
Scales and indicators for environmental justice: framing the matter
Reading: Wallace-Wells, D. (2019). The uninhabitable earth: Life after warming. Crown. Chapters Systems and The Church of Technology. Available here and here.
Week 3:
Environmental (in)justice & global inequalities
Reading: Nixon, R. (2011). Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard University Press, p. 1-30. Available here.
Week 4:
Environmental (in)justice & neoliberal practices
Reading: Klein, N. (2007). The shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. Macmillan. Chapter: Introduction.: Blank is beautiful. Available here.
Reading: Change, Global Environmental. "The elephant in the room: Capitalism and global environmental change." Global environmental change 21 (2011): 4-6. (editorial). Available here.
Week 5:
Environmental (in)justice & race, class (1)
Reading: Karmakar, G. (2024). Plachimada Struggle and the Environmentalism of the Poor:(In) justice and Activism in Mayilamma: The Life of a Tribal Eco-Warrior. Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa, 36(2), 124-137. Available here.
Conde, M., Walter, M., Wagner, L., & Navas, G. (2023). Slow justice and other unexpected consequences of litigation in environmental conflicts. Global Environmental Change, 83, 102762. Available here.
Week 6:
Environmental (in)justice & race, class (2)
Reading: Klinenberg, E. (2015). Heat wave: A social autopsy of disaster in Chicago. University of Chicago press. Chapter 1 Dying Alone: The Social Production of Isolation. Available here.
Week 7:
Urban communities, gender and childhood from environmental justice perspective
Reading: Ross, A. (2025). The weather report: A journey through unsettled climates. Common Notions. Introduction. Available here.
Week 8:
Dispossessions and green-fication - state led environmental injustice
Reading. Van Der Ploeg, J. D., Franco, J. C., & Borras Jr, S. M. (2015). Land concentration and land grabbing in Europe: a preliminary analysis. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 36(2), 147-162. Available here.
Week 9:
Environmental privileges and the fight for environmental justice
Reading: Conde, M., Walter, M., Wagner, L., & Navas, G. (2023). Slow justice and other unexpected consequences of litigation in environmental conflicts. Global Environmental Change, 83, 102762. Available here.
Week 10:
Water, air, energy – access for the vulnerable
Reading: Razzouk, A. (2022). Saving the planet without the Bullsh*t: What they don’t tell you about the climate crisis. Atalantic Books. Chapter: Green bonds do more harm than good. Available here.
Week 11:
Environmental governance – who decides what for whom?
Reading: Almeida, D. V., Kolinjivadi, V., Ferrando, T., Roy, B., Herrera, H., Goncalves, M. V., & Van Hecken, G. (2023). The “greening” of empire: The European Green Deal as the EU first agenda. Political Geography, 105, 102925. Available here.
Week 12:
Engaged anthropology and environmental justice: methods/tools/ethics
Reading: Low, S. M., & Merry, S. E. (2010). Engaged anthropology: diversity and dilemmas: an introduction to supplement 2. Current anthropology, 51(S2), S203-S226. Available here.
Week 13:
Focusing on the future(s) of the Earth
Reading: Kivinen, S., Kotilainen, J., & Kumpula, T. (2020). Mining conflicts in the European Union: Environmental and political perspectives. Fennia-International Journal of Geography, 198(1-2), 163-179. Available here.
Week 14:
Final remarks: employing sociology into fixing climate change
Optional bibliography:
Environmental (in)justice – Anthropocene
Lövbrand, Eva, et al. "Who speaks for the future of Earth? How critical social science can extend the conversation on the Anthropocene." Global Environmental Change 32 (2015): 211-218.
Lidskog, Rolf, and Claire Waterton. "Anthropocene–a cautious welcome from environmental sociology?." Environmental Sociology 2.4 (2016): 395-406.
Houston, Donna. "Crisis is where we live: Environmental justice for the Anthropocene." Crisis, Movement, Management: Globalising Dynamics. Routledge, 2016. 97-108.
Schlosberg, David. "Disruption, community, and resilient governance: environmental justice in the Anthropocene." The Commons in a Glocal World. Routledge, 2019. 54-71.
Environmental (in)justice & race, class, gender
Cooper, Tim. "Recycling modernity: waste and environmental history." History Compass 8.9 (2010): 1114-1125.
Barca, Stefania. "Telling the right story: Environmental violence and liberation narratives." Environment and History 20.4 (2014): 535-546.
Dunajeva, Jekatyerina, and Joanna Kostka. "Racialized politics of garbage: waste management in urban Roma settlements in Eastern Europe." Ethnic and Racial Studies 45.1 (2022): 90-112.
Pearse, R. (2017). Gender and climate change. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 8(2), e451.
Cole, H. V., Lamarca, M. G., Connolly, J. J., & Anguelovski, I. (2017). Are green cities healthy and equitable? Unpacking the relationship between health, green space and gentrification. J Epidemiol Community Health, 71(11), 1118-1121.
Creţan, Remus, et al. "Everyday Roma stigmatization: Racialized urban encounters, collective histories and fragmented habitus." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 46.1 (2022): 82-100.
Cole, L. W., & Foster, S. R. (2001). From the ground up: Environmental racism and the rise of the environmental justice movement (Vol. 34). NYU Press.
Kabisch, N., Haase, D., & Annerstedt van den Bosch, M. (2016). Adding natural areas to social indicators of intra-urban health inequalities among children: A case study from Berlin, Germany. International journal of environmental research and public health, 13(8), 783.
Sze, J. (2006). Noxious New York: The racial politics of urban health and environmental justice. MIT press.
Vann R. Newkirk II, “Trump’s EPA Concludes Environmental Racism Is Real”, The Atlantic, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/the-trump-administration-finds-that-environmental-racism-is-real/554315/
Environmental (in)justice & neoliberal practices
Change, Global Environmental. "The elephant in the room: Capitalism and global environmental change." Global environmental change 21 (2011): 4-6. (editorial)
Faber, Daniel. "Global capitalism, reactionary neoliberalism, and the deepening of environmental injustices." Capitalism Nature Socialism 29.2 (2018): 8-28.
Bullard, Nicola, and Tadzio Müller. "Beyond the ‘Green Economy’: System change, not climate change?." Development 55.1 (2012): 54-62.
Escobar, Arturo. "Degrowth, postdevelopment, and transitions: a preliminary conversation." Sustainability science 10 (2015): 451-462.
Nixon, R. (2011). Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard University Press, p. 1-30
Environmental (in)justice & global inequalities
Shue, Henry. "Global environment and international inequality." International affairs 75.3 (1999): 531-545.
Martinez-Alier, Joan, et al. "Is there a global environmental justice movement?." The Journal of Peasant Studies 43.3 (2016): 731-755.
Agyeman, Julian, et al. "Trends and directions in environmental justice: from inequity to everyday life, community, and just sustainabilities." Annual Review of Environment and Resources 41.1 (2016): 321-340.
Temper, Leah, Daniela Del Bene, and Joan Martinez-Alier. "Mapping the frontiers and front lines of global environmental justice: the EJAtlas." Journal of Political Ecology 22.1 (2015): 255-278.
Andeobu, L., Wibowo, S., & Grandhi, S. (2023). Informal E-waste recycling practices and environmental pollution in Africa: What is the way forward?. International journal of hygiene and environmental health, 252, 114192.