Class Research Resources and Assignments
Video
of Class Session 1Week 1
Class Research Resources and Assignments
Video
of Class Session 1
| Introduction to Environmental Justice Background and Overview of the Course: Timothy C. Weiskel Some course preliminaries:
Background By way of introduction to the subject of "Environmental Justice" we should remember that we are dealing with the intersection of the environment AND of notions of justice. The underlying effort of the entire semester will be to encourage and provoke you to think through principles of environmental justice. Further, we would do well to remember that our understanding of justice and injustice in America is deeply intertwined with race. We will be combining our analysis of environmental issues along with a broader appreciation of America's particular history of justice and injustice with reference to indigenous peoples, peoples of color and those from other cultures around the world. In this context, it will be helpful to begin with a broad background article on race and the environment in American culture:
Beyond this, in particular case studies that we will be considering during the semester first step will be to be able to isolate and then analyze the principles that guide just and ethical behavior in the environment. We will often do this by way of considering specific historical cases of environmental injustice as well as explicit and implicit principles expressed in the formulation of specific policies. Ethical dilemmas exist wherever there are choices to be made. The pattern of choices made -- or left un-made by default -- reveal the implicit environmental ethic that governs human behavior in particular cases. So we will be discussing specific cases in a framework that will seek to highlight the principles of environmental justice. These principles are both reflected in these specific cases and they transcend these cases to form the basis for your larger reflections on problems of environmental justice in human society. Over the next week, to begin with, please consider the following information and think about how you might be able to give a detailed description of the separate categories suggested in the framework provided. Consider, for example, some of the environmental justice issues surrounding climate.change and the impact of severe weather events:
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