Global Environmental Justice: Dams, Data, War, and More

This is a course about the politics and practices of environmental justice organizing around the world. Using a comparative case study approach, we explore place-based, socio-environmental conflicts involving dams, data centers, wars, tourism, energy transitions, waste, and more in a variety of global locations. Throughout our study, we ask: Who struggles for environmental justice (EJ) and under what conditions? When and why are EJ mobilizations successful? How do repertoires of contention differ by political and ecological context, and by the type of conflict? What is common among spatially and sectorally divergent EJ struggles? And is there a global EJ movement? Course materials draw from critical and decolonial perspectives and scholarship, with a final project that offers students the opportunity to collaborate with the Environmental Justice Atlas.