Preconference: Communicating Environmental Issues Among Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Many current socio-environmental conflicts and problems around the world that include distinct nationalities, races or ethnicities at their core, such as the slash-and-burn of forests in Indonesia that affects air quality in southeast Asia, the Flint, MI water crisis, or the export of toxic waste from developed to developing countries, require an interdisciplinary scholarly approach to make sense of the communication challenges that are involved. However, current research in this area has not focused strongly on the ways in which environmental issues are culturally and socially constructed by racial and ethnic minorities. Many of these environmental problems, including but not limited to the sitting of industrial facilities, flooding, droughts, climate change, and air and water pollution, among others, disproportionately affect minority populations.
These issues are also important for international communication scholars. Cultures define nature and environmental protection differently. As a result, cultures affect environmental laws and policies through their influence on public knowledge, political culture, institutions and subjective human perception. Therefore, an examination of the cultural characteristics of immigrants is particularly relevant to how environmental protection takes shape; conversely, questions about the meaning of environmentalism are relevant to how ethnic identity is formed.
The location of the ICA conference is a fitting setting for this pre-conference, considering that there is a large Hispanic population in the area, as well as the proximity of San Diego to the border with Mexico. In addition, the conference theme (interventions) seems to fit with the idea that environmental communication scholars and practitioners can effectively intervene to engage ethnic groups that traditionally are not included in decision making or deliberation processes that directly affect their livelihoods.
In summary, this pre-conference seeks to improve our understanding of culturally bounded rationalities across racial and ethnic groups facing environmental challenges, as they relate to the formation of environmental identities, environmental injustice, political activism, public engagement, and media representations, among others. We hope to pave the way for additional prospective research on these topics.

Sub Unit

• Sponsored Sessions

Chair

• Bruno Takahashi, Michigan State U