Colonialism, Racism, and Environmental Justice Flashcards
(30 cards)
New imperialism in late 19th and early 20th century
- Global North imperial powers expand colonial territories on unprecedented scale in search of
– resources and land (eg. for cash crop agriculture)
– cheap labor - Second industrial revolution increases demand for both by increasing productive capacity, thereby creating increased demand for raw materials and new markets
What socio-ecological crises does Holleman believe arose from new imperialism?
- Soil erosion
- Starvation
Why did soil erosion arise from new imperialism? (Holleman’s socio-ecological crises)
- Colonial policies promote cash crops for export
– ie. monocultural farming aimed at mass production for exportation - More land farmed more uniformly and more aggressively
- Market also incentivizes cash crop agriculture and encourages farmers to produce as much as possible as quickly as possible
- In the long run, this erodes soil (ie. 1st global environmental crisis)
Why did starvation arise from new imperialism (and soil erosion)? (Holleman’s socio-ecological crises)
- Cash crops for export outstrip food crops for local consumption
- Leading to a) decreased dietary variation and nutrition b) severe humanmade famines in colonized areas
- Likened by some to “late Victorian holocaust”
What is the colonialism-environmental harm link? (even at the time)
- Soil erosion understood at the time to be a consequence of colonial conquest and agricultural practices
- Soil erosion a “disease to which any civilization founded on the European model seems liable when it attempts to grow outside of Europe”
- Soil erosion a “warning that Nature is in full revolt against the sudden incursion of an exotic civilization - Europe - into her ordered domains”
What is the white man’s burden?
Imperial view that white race is morally obliged to civilize the rest of the world and facilitate its development through colonialism
What is the white man’s burden in relation to environmental harm?
- Soil erosion framed as another “white man’s burden”
– ie. burden of development that white colonizers must shoulder despite having created - Recognition that colonialism creates socio-ecological crises, but contention that these can be fixed with more colonialism
Colonialism and white supremacy (Holleman)
- White supremacy essential, according to Holleman, to new imperialism
- Provides “justificatory” pretext for colonial conquest
– ie. alleged “superiority” means whites have obligation to intervene around the world - Environmental colonialism shaped, according to Holleman, by both:
– material compulsions of capital accumulation
– immaterial ideology of white supremacy
– ie. capitalistic economic growth can be pursued via colonialism because racism provides a legitimating pretext for intervention
Background to the US Dust Bowl
- Early 1870s: US ends recognition of native tribal sovereignty
- 1887: Dawes Act authorizes federal government to privatize land held in common by native tribes
- Privatization opens large tracts of “unassigned” land to settlers and economic actors (75% previously indigenous land designated “unassigned” and opened up)
- Settlers of newly privatized land often economically disadvantaged
- White supremacy + domestic new imperial land grabs = “release valve” for class antagonism
- Ensuing settler colonialism into Southern Plains region organized around environmentally destructive cash crop agriculture where market logic - not environmental health - dictates how land and resources are used
What happened during the 1930s US Dust Bowl?
- Environment of Southern Plains can’t sustain cash crop agricultural practices
- Empire, capitalism, and racism come to a head in soil erosion of 1930s US Dust Bowl
- Dust Bowl: period of severe dust storms and drought
- Not a domestic-regional problem
- A manifestation of first global environmental crisis (ie. soil erosion) driven by imperialism, white supremacy, and capitalism
Contemporary implications of Dust Bowl (Holleman)
- Soil erosion and desertification likely to reemerge with climate change
- Learning wrong lessons from past soil erosion means we’re liable to mishandle new, climate-driven forms
- Standard Dust Bowl lesson: soil erosion and desertification caused by poor knowledge and inadequate tech, corrected through better knowledge and tech
- Holleman argues this isn’t the right lesson: soil erosion and desertification weren’t just a knowledge-tech problem in the past (ie. because they were caused by imperialism, white supremacy, and capitalism) and won’t be just a knowledge-tech problem in the future
- Colonialism might be over, but coloniality endures in how Global North calculates cost of climate action (ie. sacrifices far away peoples and places because changing own relation to environment too onerous)
Environmental racism definition
Sacrifice of racial minorities’ environmental health and well-being for sake of racial majority’s
Distribution of environmental harms and racism
- 1970s: scholars study distribution of environmental harms across society
- In racialized societies, allocation of environmental bads/costs and goods/benefits can track race
– eg. in US, non-white populations more likely to live and work in environmentally degraded places
Link between environmental colonialism and environmental racism
Logic of sacrifice links environmental colonialism and environmental racism
- Just as Global North sacrifices Global South’s environmental well-being for its own well-being (Holleman), racial majority within North may sacrifice racial minority’s environmental well-being for its own (Bullard)
White privilege definition
Benefits and advantages that accrue in highly racialized societies to white people simply due to their whiteness
Difference between racism and white privilege?
- Different from overt racism because it’s not intentional
- Can occur when no one means to be racist
– eg. in context where social structures reproduce white privilege, just maintaining status quo will benefit whites
White privilege and environment
White privilege means environmental racism (ie. environmental sacrifice of racial minority for racial majority) can be unintentional
Ecologically unequal exchange (EUE) definition/idea
Structural relationships between more and less powerful groups can lead to the uneven, unfair, and unequal distribution of environmental flows, good and bad
- EUE can play out at international level (eg. Global North v Global South, Givens et al.) or within a single country
Givens EUE and environmental injustice two basic dynamics
- Injustice
- Environmental load displacement
– Both dynamics may be overlooked without global perspective (eg. Netherlands fallacy)
Injustice (EUE and global injustice, Givens et al.)
- Global North takes more environmental goods or resources from Global South (ie. tap)
- Global North dumps more environmental bads or waste in Global South (ie. sink)
Environmental load displacement (EUE and global injustice, Givens et al.)
- Global North physically relocates environmental bads to South (eg. shipping of waste, offshoring environmentally taxing industry)
- Global North temporally relocates environmental bads to South (ie. future generations generally obliged to bear environmental harms they didn’t create and this phenomenon magnified in South)
Ecological debt definition
Unequally and unjustly treating Global South as an environmental tap and sink (EUE), the Global North developed by incurring a material debt to the Global South
What could paying off the ecological debt mean?
- Global North mitigating its emissions
- Global North helping Global South to achieve comparable development, ideally in a now less environmentally taxing way
How is ecologically unequal exchange connected to colonialism and coloniality, Fraser?
- Environmental cost of fixing metabolic rift in North borne by South (eg. guano-nitrates trade)
- Environmental good of soil repair in North achieved via imposition of environmental (alongside social and political) bads in South
