Working on Earth: Class and Environmental Justice

by Christina Robertson (Editor), Jennifer Westerman (Editor)

Overview

This collection of essays examines the relationship between environmental injustice and the exploitation of working-class people. Twelve scholars from the fields of environmental humanities and the humanistic social sciences explore connections between the current and unprecedented rise of environmental degradation, economic inequality, and widespread social injustice in the United States and Canada.

The authors challenge prevailing cultural narratives that separate ecological and human health from the impacts of modern industrial capitalism. Essay themes range from how human survival is linked to nature to how the use and abuse of nature benefit the wealthy elite at the expense of working-class people and the working poor as well as how climate change will affect cultures deeply rooted in the land.

Ultimately, Working on Earth calls for a working-class ecology as an integral part of achieving just and sustainable human development.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780874179637
Publisher:	University of Nevada Press
Publication date:	02/25/2015
Edition description:	1
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	3 Months to 18 Years

About the Author

Christina Robertson earned her PhD in literature and the environment at the University of Nevada, Reno. She teaches environmental literature, ethnic studies, and composition.

Jennifer Westerman is assistant professor of sustainable development at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. She specializes in environmental literature, working-class studies, and environmental justice.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Introduction: Toward a Working-Class Ecology Christina Robertson Jennifer Westerman 1

Part I Working for a Living: Class, Justice, and Environment

1 Raining in Vietnam: The Personal Politics of Climate Justice Charles Waugh 13

2 Working in Nature, Playing in Wilderness: Race, Class, and Environmental History in the Apostle Islands James W. Felduan 33

3 "The Rich Go Higher": The Geography of Rural Development, Fire Management, and Environmental Justice in Utah's Wildland Urban Interface Jason Roberts 58

4 Beyond Boom and Bust: Recovering the Place of Kootenay Working-Class Stories Christina Robertson 78

Part II The Ways We Work: Toxic Consequences

5 Requiem for Landscape Edie Steiner 101

6 "Clean Air, Clean Water, and Jobs Forever": Filming Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining Terre Ryan 123

7 Bright Lights, Big City Ills: Artificial Light and the Night Shift Paul Bogard 143

8 From Orchards to Cubicles: Work and Space in the Silicon Valley Debra J. Salazar 156

Part III The Workers and the Land: Toward a Just and Sustainable Future

9 "It's a Different World": Using Oral Histories to Explore Working-Class Perceptions of Environmental Change Peter Friederici 179

10 Working Wilderness: Ranching, Proprietary Rights to Nature, Environmental Justice, and Climate Change Joni Adamson 197

11 "Survival is Triumph Enough": Class, Environmental Consciousness, and the Southern Memoir Scott Hicks 219

12 Reinhabiting the Poor Farm in Memory and Landscape Jennifer Westerman 240

Contributors 259

Index 263

Editorial Reviews

Working on Earth is a significant contribution to the literature on class, labor, personal history, and environmentalism. Indeed, it is one of the first volumes of its kind to explain the ways in which class and the environment are powerfully, and sometimes tragically, entwined.” —Kathleen Newman, Associate Professor of English and cultural studies, Carnegie Mellon University, and blogger for the Center for Working Class Studies

"[Working on Earth] is useful for scholars and students who wish to encounter a wide variety of stories, history, and argument about working-class relationship to nature so often and easily overlooked or suppressed in the board sweep of environmental studies . . ."—Western American Literature

“Working on Earth is essential reading for anyone interested in environmental justice, political ecology, sustainability studies, and labor studies, and its narrative essays would be perfect to use, collectively or individually, in undergraduate and graduate courses.” —Utah Historical Quarterly
 

From the Publisher