2018 Conference

Individual Paper Presentation

Environmental justice literature rarely offers an explicit theory of race to explain processes of disparate environmental exposure and recourse in non-white and low-income communities. Failing to do so, analyses of environmental inequality risk eliding a central driver of environmental racism. Based on a qualitative case study of a contested birth defect cluster in California, this article traces the ways in which the evidence of environmental health harms are rendered conceptually invisible by the institutions mandated to protect public health and the environment. Turning to a theoretical model of contested illness mobilization, I demonstrate the value of critical race perspectives to clarify the production and maintenance of intersecting, cumulative harms without recourse in communities of color. I find the type of monitoring, data production, and analysis deemed actionable by the state is neither conducive to nor aligned with decades of methodological advancement on the effects of cumulative chemical exposure on ecosystems and human bodies. Epistemologies of environmental health ignorance, render the adverse effects and those harmed, not only conceptually invisible (Mills 2007) but also scientifically and legally invisible. Centered on racially veridical analyses, environmental justice scholarship can more precisely analyze the recalcitrance of dominant group interests. Ultimately, this enables theorization of the distinct landscape of exposure and recourse in subaltern versus favored bodies and space.