Environmental justice: revealing environmental inequality
Status: This talk is in preparation - details may change
Status: This talk has been cancelled
*Unfortunately this seminar has been cancelled*
Unfortunately this seminar has been cancelled

This interactive seminar, aimed at a broad audience of social, environmental and public health scholars and practitioners, will provide an introduction to environmental justice followed by a selection of insightful case studies, such as the Chernobyl nuclear contamination and Louisiana’s ‘cancer alley’ as well as cases of resistance and resignation to pollution from contemporary China. These examples will reveal some of the patterns of unequal distribution of environmental health burdens, the diverse reactions among communities and the challenges communities may face in seeking redress. Between sections the audience will have the opportunity to pose questions and make contributions.

Professor Anna Lora-Wainwright joined the School of Geography and the Environment in September 2009, jointly appointed by the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies (SIAS). She has a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Oxford University; an MA in Chinese Studies and a BA in Anthropology, both from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

Anna’s work embodies a particular synergy between human geography and the study of China and focuses on environmental pollution, development and health in the Chinese countryside. She is a keen supporter of long-term ethnographic field research and since 2004 she has carried out long periods of fieldwork in rural China. Her work offers a new type of bottom-up political ecology, which does not assume local communities are passive and isolated victims of development and capitalist oppression, nor that they are inherently ‘nature-friendly’ but focuses on the agency of farmers or workers in polluting industries, potential conflicts of interests and attitudes to ‘clean nature’ versus ‘pollution’.

The Green Templeton College Social Sciences Seminar Series aims to increase dialogue between the social science disciplines at Green Templeton and beyond. The social sciences represent a diverse spectrum of disciplines ranging through population and demography, public health, anthropology, human geography, criminology and more. ‘Environment’ provides a common theme for debate, acting as a locus for inter- and transdisciplinary dialogue.
Date: 13 May 2019, 17:30 (Monday, 3rd week, Trinity 2019)
Venue: EP Abraham Lecture Theatre
Speaker: Prof Anna Lora-Wainwright
Organiser: Alex Midlen
Organiser contact email address: alex.midlen@gtc.ox.ac.uk
Part of: Green Templeton Social Sciences Seminar Series
Topics:
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: https://www.gtc.ox.ac.uk/eventbrite-event/environmental-justice-revealing-environmental-inequality/
Booking email: alex.midlen@gtc.ox.ac.uk
Cost: Free
Audience: Public
Editor: Lara Truman