Temporal Structures in Environmental Permitting

• In Event: 1483 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 11. Ecological Crisis and Environmental Justice

Abstract

In recent years, scholars have called for research that examines historical and social processes involved in the formation of environmental inequalities. In this paper, I consider environmental permits as mechanisms for the development and persistence of environmental disparities. To explore the question of how and why residents in environmentally burdened communities are continuously exposed to environmental health hazards, I present an ethnographic case study. Drawing on six-months of field research, I focus on a community campaign against the approval of a permit for the permanent disposal of contaminated sediment into an existing toxic site in East Chicago, Indiana. I examine how residents situate their community organizing strategies and actions. I find that both local activists and public officials are keenly aware that environmental pollution in East Chicago is not without precedent, though view environmental issues through different time frames. I illustrate how residents’ abilities to motivate and coordinate social action are rooted in their capacity to keep inventory—the documentation of events (spanning time and space) and associated experiences. Through keeping inventory, actors identify critical conjunctures that allow for public intervention in environmental decision-making processes and broader environmental trajectories.

Author

• Paola Villegas, Northwestern University