March 2004
Rebecca Zarger, Contributing Editor
Anthropology and Environment Section
Crossing the Divide: Anthropologists and Effective
Environmental Justice Policy Intervention
Contributed by: Kelly Alley (Auburn) and Melissa Checker (Memphis)
The AAA workshop, "Crossing the Divide: Anthropologists and Effective Environmental Justice Policy Intervention," was organized by members of the A & E environmental justice working group. It brought together professionals and activists to explore collaborative possibilities and forge alliances with anthropologists. Policy makers, a grassroots activist, an environmental lawyer, and several policy-oriented academics helped anthropologists broaden their understanding of policy-making activities, laws and litigation within the field of environmental justice, and to find the best entry points for effective intervention.
The workshop's first presenter, Adam Babich, Director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Tulane University, emphasized that litigation is only one tool among many that grassroots groups use to oppose industrial practices or prevent the siting of landfills and industries in their neighborhoods. He and others stressed that litigation should come after communities have been empowered to document their own conditions and decide remedies. Sylvia Hood Washington elaborated this position further when talking about her environmental oral history project, funded by the national Catholic organization, Knights of Peter Claver. Before completing her Ph.D. in history, Washington worked as an environmental engineer for NASA. In her current project, Washington is working to facilitate environmental literacy by teaching science in a way that is not intimidating and informing community members of their right to legal redress.
Mardi Klevs, the Greater Chicago Urban Initiative Manager for the U.S. EPA, argued that anthropologists can help translate scientific language and regulations to affected communities and also push for greater attention to social and health variables not currently recognized in EPA risk assessments. Anthropologists can also promote the importance of qualitative studies among EPA officials who can use them when designing their survey instruments.
Kate Gillogly, anthropologist with an SFAA-EPA fellowship, worked with affected communities in Chicago and conducted a qualitative study for Klevs' department. She found substantial differences in the environmental perceptions of members of different community networks. However, all groups had similar concerns about regulating industry, sustaining the economy, and creating development to bring young people back into the community. All communities also had "brokers" who carried information back and forth between communities and government agencies.
Cheryl Johnson of Chicago's People for Community Recovery talked about her role as a broker for communities residing in public housing in south Chicago. Community members started documenting landfills, industrial plants and chemical plants in the area, and when they found regulatory lapses they reported them to the EPA. Residents also convinced the Chicago Housing Authority to remove lead and asbestos from their homes as they documented the health effects of lead poisoning and designed health interventions.
Concluding the session, Bunyan Bryant, director of the EJ initiative at the University of Michigan, argued that we are in a crisis of epistemology. Scientific research and litigation have not worked to benefit local groups, who should be empowered with their own resources before they hire lawyers to represent them in court. He added that anthropologists can contribute to EJ by "studying up" -- that is, by conducting ethnographic research on governmental agencies and polluting corporations.
In the follow-up discussion, several panelists debated the notion of the anthropologist as translator to the community. Bryant argued that too much emphasis is placed on research done by outsiders, including anthropologists. For instance, white anthropologists translating to black communities about science and regulations is not the answer; rather, affected community members must speak for themselves. Johnson agreed that members of her community already have the scientific knowledge they need. Anthropologists can make a more important contribution by translating the realities of poor and minority communities to EPA and other government agencies through scientific research and critiques of regulatory policy and the law. In this way, anthropologists can assist communities in applying the leverage needed to rectify local environmental problems.
Send essays, news, and other information to the section editor: Rebecca Zarger (zarger@fiu.edu), Dept. of Environmental Studies & Sociology/Anthropology, ECS 332, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199.