Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Environmental Sciences

Document Type

Dissertation

Abstract

Many scholars have suggested that the current environmental justice literature does not address the historically-informed social underpinnings of what creates and upholds environmental inequality (Park and Pellow 2004; Pellow 2006; Teelucksingh 2007; Kurtz 2009; Holifield et al. 2009; Pellow 2016; Pulido 2017). To fully understand the breadth of environmental inequality, the current study aims to understand how place, theorized according to Gieryn (2000) as a culmination of space, material, and cultural meaning assigned to it by those within and without, informs and upholds the environmental inequality within. The first objective aims to understand how slavery informs contemporary Black-White TRI distribution inequality. This aim is approached using spatial regression methods, spatial mapping, and quantitative data obtained from EPA and Census databases. The second objective aims to capture how environmental justice community leaders confront collective memories of injustice and use them to inform collective action. Other social dynamics influencing collective action are uncovered and applied to practical implications for the future of Louisiana environmental land use planning, and management. Aim 1 findings suggest that environmental inequality is a more contemporary outcome, given that racialized environmental inequality persists contemporarily in places with greater Black presence. Aim 2 findings indicate memorial connections between historical injustices and contemporary environmental inequality, resulting in environmental justice collective action outcomes. Decisions to organize EJ collective action were often initiated by a series of place-based factors: 1) historical racial inequality, 2) strong place attachment, 3) contemporary environmental inequality mirroring history and elders as historians 4) government distrust and historically perceived governmental inadequacies, 5) industrial distrust and historical wrongdoing by industry, and 6) sharing of history from community historians and members’ bodies. Collective action was also influenced by social dynamics within place, which included: 1) trust responses and 2) spiritual faith and religion, both found to have guided collective action in EJ movements. Results of these collective memories include organizing collective action to ensure historic inequalities are not replicated, collective action to protect their community, its values, and its inhabitants, and collective action to engage civic spheres to empower change.

Date

8-21-2025

Committee Chair

Reams, Margaret

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