Climate Justice, Women of Color and Teaching as Activism in Louisiana

• In Event: Bad Queers, Bold Crips, and Black Femmes - III: The Materiality of Deviance in Institutions, Movements, and Mediascapes

Abstract

Critical environmental justice (EJ) scholars, ecofeminists and anthropologists of climate change discuss the need to decolonize and historicize simplistic understandings of the Anthropocene i.e. the current geologic age characterized by irrevocable harm to human-nature relations. Ideologically aligned with the scholar-activist tradition of environmental anthropology, these researchers encourage further enquiry into the role(s) of Indigenous communities, women and people of color in resisting state-corporate crime and necropolitics that ultimately result in premature death. Gender is similarly under-theorized in emerging environmental justice and climate justice paradigms. In fact, feminist climate researchers argue that Indigenous women and women of color are among the groups most impacted by climate change due to the intersections of layered socioeconomic vulnerabilities. Nonetheless, these women are vastly underrepresented in national and international climate policy debates. My research consequently aims to identify barriers and opportunities for women of color in Louisiana river and bayou parishes to shape climate policy, strategize for climate adaptation/resilience and promote climate justice. My research critiques literature that discusses women of color solely as victims as opposed to problem solvers in relation to climate mitigation and adaptation. Through my investigation of gender justice and climate justice, I hope to meaningfully contribute theoretical understanding to the dynamic and co-constitutive relationships between gender, race, nature, justice, place-making, violence and power. With these considerations in mind, I employ Black feminist autoethnography, feminist political ecology and participatory action research (PAR) to methodologically investigate gendered and racialized political assemblages that complicate environmental governance in post-apocalyptic coastal landscapes.

Author

• Frances Roberts-Gregory, University of California, Berkeley