Rethinking environmental justice. Anthropological perspectives on environments, natures and inequalities in the age of the Anthropocene

Abstract

The article proposes a theoretical review of the notion of environmental justice starting from the contribution that contemporary anthropology has made to the critique of the nature-culture dichotomy and to the Anthropocene debate.   First, the origins and developments of environmental justice both as a space of social struggle and as a theoretical frame elaborated in academia will be reconstructed. Foundational categories such as "nature" and "environment" will then be discussed in light of Americanist studies on plural and relational ontologies alternative to the Western one, and multispecies perspectives centered on the notion of assemblage. The role of ethnographic temporality in understanding environmental inequalities rooted in classist and racialized colonial dynamics will, thereafter, be explored. Finally, brief mention will be made of some feminist reflections on the Anthropocene that offer further insights into rethinking environmental justice.

Keywords: environmental justice, Anthropocene, environment/nature, non-humans, inequality