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Issue 2.2 Abstracts

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The "Environmental Justices" Frame: A Conceptual Discussion and an Application

By Stella M. Capek

Drawing on a social constructionist perspective, this paper: 1) identifies some of the most salient dimensions of the "environmental justice" frame as it has emerged from local community struggles over toxic contanimation in the United States; and 2) provides an empirical illustration of the emergence and application of this concept in a particular contaminated neighborhood of Texarkana, Texas. Carver Terrace, an African-American community consisting mostly of homeowners, recently organized to win a federal buyout and relocation after being declared a Superfund site in 1984. Using case study evidence, the paper argues that the residents' ability to mobilize for social change was intimately linked to their adoption of an "environmental justice" frame. The intent of the conceptual discussion of environmental justice and the case study is to clarify the meaning of a term and with increasing frequency and some ambiguity in both popular and acadmeic discourse. This paper documents the process by which the environmental justice frame is constructed in an interplay between the local community and national levels of antitoxics movement.

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Environmental Justice and "Shared Fate": A Contractarian Defense of Fair Compen sation

By Ernest Partridge

Abstract: Prof. Capek's paper, "The 'Environmental Justice ' Frame: A Conceptual Discussion and an Application, " is an insightful account of the emergence of a collective conception of environmental injustice in the Carver Terrace community. It further describes how this sense of injustice focused a successful effort to obtain compensation for damages. Missing from this account (and appropriately so) is the question of whether that claim for compensation was ethically justifiable. That latter question is the concern, not of sociology but of moral and political philosophy. This essay affirms that the residents' claim for compensation was in fact justifiable. In making this case, this paper critically examines the "free-market libertarian" argument against compensation - an argument that is influential in current American political debate and policy. According to the libertarian position, the residents were victim, not of injustice, but of misfortune. To the contrary, I will argue on the grown3 of social contract theory that the Carver Terrace Community suffered an injustice, and was due compensation from the Federal Government.

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Rebellion in Chiapas: Ecological Spaces and Cultural Systems in Collission

By Charles R. Simpson and Anita Rapone

The insurrection of the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional (EZLN) which began January 1, 1994 in the Mexican state of Chiapas has its roots, this paper argues, in two unalterably opposed perspectives on the meaning of land and agriculture. The first, a product of community life for centuries prior to European conquest, is the indigenous perspective which sees humans and nature in a supportive equilibrium, demonstrated by subsistence agriculture undertaken by families in the context of the social order of community. In the last analysis, it is the community which suppers the future of individuals and asserts a collective and religiously-based right to the land necessary for life. However limited, the Revolution of 1910 and the Constitution of 1917 identified the state's agrarian policy with a moral economy derived from the indigenous perspective: the right to life for communities is the paramount consideration in the organization of rural property.

The second perspective on land and ecological space is neoliberalism, which seeks to integrate the resources of Chiapas into a world system of production and trade. It defines labor as well as land and its constituent resources as economic factors of production, and assigns the state the role of protecting property ownership of biological and legal individuals (corporations). Indigenous communities and their cultures are epiphenomena.

The intensification of neoliberal policies in the 1990s has definitively abandoned the goals of social justice for peasants institutionalized after the Mexican Revolution and brought Indigenous spatial and communal systems to the edge of destruction. The insurgency of the EZLN, along with intensified political protests, peasant land seizures, productive and marketing innovations designed to by-pass the dominant economy, and theological assaults on the legitimacy of the status quo, are elements of a common rejection of the commodification of the environment and the consequent marginalization and cultural extinction of Indians.

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Place Identity in Outdoor Recreation: The Case of Norwegian Boaters

By Ronny Meyer

This study examined place identity among recreational boaters at two geographical levels in the Notteroy/Tjome Skerries in the Oslo fjord. Length of association, association last season, place satisfaction, and residential connection to the boating area were examined as potential indicators of place identity. Results suggest that place identity is related to both length of association, association last season, and satisfaction. Length of association proved the best single indicator of these, but all three variables contributed to explaining variance in place identity. With respect to residential connection, cabin dwellers experienced the strongest place identity, followed by locals and boat tourists. Boaters identified more strongly with the area than with their most used site in the area. Boat tourists distinguished less between the two geographical levels than cabin dwellers and locals in terms of place identity. Implications for management are discussed.

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