Scaling Inequality: A Meso-Level Approach to Environmental Inequality and Justice

• In Event: Environmental Justice, DEI, and Threats to Equity Work

Abstract

This paper proposes a meso-level approach to environmental inequality and justice (EIJ), shifting focus from macro-level state policies and micro-level individual impacts to the role of organizations as key driving and legitimizing agents. While EIJ studies have traditionally documented hazard distribution and state power, I argue that meso-level entities - including workplaces, nonprofits, and government agencies - are steeped in racialized, gendered, and classed logics that filter environmental policy and individual actions. By integrating David Pellow’s Critical Environmental Justice (CEJ) framework with established organizational inequality theories, I detail how mechanisms like managerial authority and racial tasking sustain environmental injustices. The core contribution of this work is the synthesis of organizational inequality frameworks (such as Inequality Regimes and Relational Inequality Theory) with the four pillars of CEJ to identify specific sites of marginalization, including biased recruitment, exclusionary organizational hierarchies, and the devaluation of EJ communities. Specifically, the paper highlights Environmental Movement Organizations (EMOs) as meso-level actors that often reproduce historical inequalities despite their environmental missions. Ultimately, this research provides a theoretical blueprint for scholars to move beyond documenting inequality toward identifying concrete pathways for social change and the amelioration of environmental harm.

Author

• Sam L Castonguay, Michigan State University