Conceptualizing Environmental Justice

Book excerpt: Conceptualizing Environmental Justice evolved from an ethnographic study of an environmental justice movement in a rural community called Land Between the Rivers in Kentucky. The environmental movement emerged as a result of collective displacement for the construction of two dams and an environmental refuge over a period of sixty years. This book explores the historical and contemporary efforts to mobilize the community and asks what specific strategies and tools were adopted and how these tools coalesced into four justice themes: cultural injustices, economic deprivation, institutional fairness, and political agency. It explores how each theme shaped and informed the displaced residents’ efforts to protect their rights and seek justice. This book argues that expanding the conceptual foci of environmental justice theory and identifying both distributive and non-distributive themes of justice allows us to understand the complexities of environmental movement narratives and examine what shape environmental justice movements will take in the future.