EJJE STUDY DAYS ON 5 & 6 OCTOBER 2023
TRANSFORMATIVE COLLECTIVE ACTION IN ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE (2ND SESSION)
In light of studies demonstrating the limitations of public policies on sustainable development and the transition to tackling global change and protecting the environment and public health, some authors see the power of collective action as the only potential driver of the socio-ecological transformations that are expected (Schlosberg and Craven 2019; Stevis 2020; Pruvost 2021, etc.). A trend towards the breaking down of barriers between social and environmental causes, as well as between different repertoires of action, is also frequently highlighted (Grisoni and Nemoz 2017), coupled with a form of ‘ecologisation’ of radical movements and the ‘radicalisation’ of environmentalist movements (Malm 2020).
This literature is, however, predominantly focused on the so-called ‘Northern’ countries, where the dominant discourse of socio-ecological transition – or the more radical discourse of transformation – is developing in a Eurocentric manner (Martin et al. 2020). The capacity of communities in the so-called ‘South’ to mobilise to protect their environment, ecosystem relationships and ways of life operating outside the dynamics of hegemonic exploitation is, however, amply documented in the field of environmental justice and in the literature on popular environmentalism (Martinez-Alier 2014; Temper et al. 2018; Daré and Ba 2023; Cuadros 2018).
The scope and limitations of these interpretations in terms of popular environmentalism, or indeed subsistence (Pruvost 2021), call for further exploration of the motivations or causes being defended, in their material, ontological, ideological, existential and even spiritual dimensions. It is also a matter of reflecting on the links between social justice and justice for nature, or indeed the way in which these approaches analyse responsibilities, interpret relationships with nature (the perspectives of the other, perspectivism, etc.), or define cosmopolitics. Perceiving and accounting for the effects, forms of reception and archival traces of collective actions on communities of life, and how these actions can work to redefine the interdependencies between humans and non-humans, requires a rethinking of research methods, as implemented to date from the territories of the ‘North’.
This symposium aims to explore what characterises these capacities for action, against a backdrop of global change and worsening ecological vulnerabilities in the ‘South’, with the aim of contributing to the decolonisation of approaches to environmental justice (Alvarez and Coolsaet 2018), gaining a better understanding of the forms of transformation currently underway in the ‘South’ – which remain less explored – and participating in the learning processes emerging from these, with a view to enriching the knowledge and practices of environmental justice.
These sessions are conceived as milestones in a series of reflections on the ethics of research in environmental justice, and on the practices and knowledge involved in investigating communities – particularly in relation to whether the researcher belongs to the group under study. They will also help to inform the following questions, around which a broader programme of work is being defined:
Theme 1: Through which frameworks, collective discourses and generic languages (of environmental justice, climate justice, transition, transformation, domination, etc.) are causes or demands expressed, including in their specific contextual or territorial dimensions?
Theme 2: Who are the actors involved in these forms of collective action? Do their characteristics tend to converge (in terms of gender, race and ethnicity, social class, age and generation, and validity) or are they heterogeneous? From where do they draw their resources, means and capacity for action (status, religious communities, networks, etc.)?
Theme 3: What are the forms of alliances, power relations or even relationships of domination that they maintain with other actors in civil society, institutions or the scientific community? In what situations do these manifest themselves? What are their relationships with democratic institutions: do they involve strategies of participation, the seizure of power, the proposal of norms or the rejection of the state? What forms do institutional responses to collective action take?
Axis 4: The legitimacy of these collectives to act is often one of the first arguments raised against them in certain areas. Consequently, how do these collectives construct this legitimacy? Or do they simply operate in the absence of legitimacy? What role do research, scientific knowledge and forms of expertise play in establishing the legitimacy to act?
Axis 5: In situations of flagrant environmental injustice, what explains the inaction of certain groups? What structural or more situational barriers stand in their way? What strategies are at play in the absence of action, and what are the potential alternative forms of resistance? When and why do mobilisations take the form of overt or relatively discreet, ‘low-key’ actions (Hayem 2020)? What forms of resistance have been observed, and do they draw their strength from their visibility or, on the contrary, from their hidden nature (Thiann-Bo Morel and Roussary 2021)?
Bibliography
Álvarez, L. and Coolsaet, B., 2018, ‘Decolonising Environmental Justice Studies: A Latin American Perspective’. *Capitalism Nature Socialism*, pp. 1–20.
Cuadros, G. M., 2018, Popular Environmentalism, Ediciones desde abajo.
Daré, W. and Ba, A., 2023, Environmental Justice in Rural Areas in Africa, Ed. Quae
Grisoni, A. and Némoz, S., 2017, Socio-ecological Movements: A Subject for Sociology. Socio-logos – Journal of the French Sociological Association, (12).
Hayem, J., 2020, ‘Low-profile mobilisations put to the test in African contexts’, Journal des anthropologues, 162–163, 245–249.
Malm, A., 2020. *How to Blow Up a Pipeline*, Verso Books.
Martin, A., Armijos, M.T., Coolsaet, B., Dawson, N., AS Edwards, G., Few, R., Gross-Camp, N., Rodriguez, I., Schroeder, H., GL Tebboth, M. and White, C.S., 2020, Environmental justice and transformations to sustainability, *Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development*, 62(6), pp. 19–30.
Martínez-Alier, J. *The Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Environmental Conflicts Around the World*, published by Les Petits matins/Inst. Veblen, 2014 [2002, translated from Spanish by A. Verkaeren].
Pruvost, G., 2021, Everyday Politics: Feminism, Ecology, Subsistence, La découverte.
Schlosberg, D., & Craven, L., 2019, Sustainable Materialism: Environmental Movements and the Politics of Everyday Life, Oxford University Press.
Stevis, D., & Felli, R., 2020, Planetary Just Transition? How inclusive and how just? *Earth System Governance*, 6, 100065.
Temper, L., Walter, M., Rodriguez, I., Kothari, A., & Turhan, E., 2018, ‘A perspective on radical transformations to sustainability: resistances, movements and alternatives’. *Sustainability Science*, 13(3), 747–764.
Thiann-Bo Morel, M. and Roussary, A., 2022, ‘The water transition and biodiversity protection – a postcolonial reading and environmental justice’ in Deldrève, C. and Candau, J., *Environmental Effort and Equity: Public Policies on Water and Biodiversity in France* (pp. 403–445). Peter Lang.
Programme for 5 and 6 October 2023
These two days follow on from an initial EJJE seminar on collective action in environmental justice, focusing on the Northern Hemisphere (https://justiceenvironnementale.inrae.fr/seminaire/) Following these very fruitful discussions, we wished to dedicate this second round of discussions to the Global South, and in particular to Africa and the Middle East, where this topic has as yet been little explored. The issues addressed (above) form part of a broader research programme on the transformative capacity of collective action in environmental justice.
The detailed programme is available here.
