Finding Hope in the Apocalypse of Now: Dehumanization, Racial Capitalism, and Global Crisis

• In Event: 41006 - Racial Capitalism and the Environment

Abstract

In this paper, I approach racial capitalism from an environmental justice perspective which provides a scaffolding for the intersection of environmental conditions and human injustices. This orientation positions environmental sociology as an appropriate location for considering the coproduction of the material context of human social systems, extending the relevance of environmental sociology as a broad sociological lens. Environmental sociology has emphasized a critical interrogation of the role of capitalism in producing modern social systems, with much debate regarding the compatibility of sustainability under capitalist conditions. Until recently, environmental sociology has overemphasized class and traditional Marxist analyses while limiting its critical consideration of race within political economic theorizing. I argue that racial capitalism is essential for understanding contemporary crises and it is its underlying logic of dehumanization which drives the engine of exploitation through which racial capitalism flourishes. By focusing on racial capitalism and taking seriously the specific pathways of dehumanization experienced by various oppressed populations, I posit that the traditional Marxist ‘solution’ of the proletariat revolution fails to account for ongoing processes of dehumanization that would endure. Rather, only through intentional and everyday practices of rehumanization does the fabric of exploitation begin to fray and create the possibility for radically different social and environmental conditions.

Author

• Jennifer S. Carrera, Michigan State University