The synergies of power in the study of environmental injustice

• In Event: 2251 - Section on Environmental Sociology Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 14. Everyday Environmentalism: Critical Perspectives

Abstract

This is an abbreviated (and in-the-making) introduction to my book manuscript, tentatively entitled Seeds of Power: Genetically Modified Crops and Environmental Injustice in Argentina.
Seeds of Power tells the story of Argentina's swift agrarian transformation based on the early adoption and intensive implementation of genetically modified herbicide-tolerant soybeans. I seek to understand how powerful actors are able to create consent over GM soy extractivism as a national model for socio-economic development and to promote inaction, creating a state of acquiescence in the face of environmental injustice. I use the case of GM soy adoption in Argentina to explore the synergies of power that create and legitimate human suffering, social inequality, and environmental degradation. I propose “synergies of power” as a conceptual shortcut to refer to the multiple and intersecting structural and symbolic dimensions of domination and control of people and nature that operate simultaneously and across time to create, compound, and legitimate environmental injustice. Seeds of Power addresses the limitations of traditional environmental justice studies by studying how multiple, historical forms of power and inequality intersect to exacerbate environmental injustice, by considering racial hierarchies that result from settler colonialism, and by focusing on the absence of mobilization and political and economic elites’ efforts to quell dissent.

Author

• Amalia Leguizamon, Tulane University