Environmental Justice and Inequality

New York University, Department of Environmental STudies

Spring 2024                             

We live on a planet of staggering environmental injustice. Poor and racialized groups, particularly in the Global South, live in increasingly hazardous environments that predispose them to disproportionate injury, suffering, and death. In contrast, middle-class and wealthy (and in the Euro-American context, disproportionately white) populations live in environments that are comparatively free of environmental harms. This course asks how such extraordinary inequality has been historically produced and sustained, as well as why it appears so intractable today, despite decades of organizing by environmental justice (EJ) activists. While providing a brief overview of environmental justice frameworks, methods, and the history of the movement in the U.S., the course will put this movement in a much broader global and historical context, centered on the issue of waste. Students will develop a deep understanding of the ways that changing economic and technological systems have contributed to environmental injustice globally from the onset of colonialism to the present, as well as how populations have resisted such unjust systems and imagined alternatives. The course requires close readings of texts from across the social sciences and humanities, particularly history and anthropology, and will be run as a discussion-based seminar.

Syllabus available here.