Of mills and mines: an intercategorical critique of the hidden harms of natural resource boom and bust cycles in U.S. history

ABSTRACT

The extant environmental justice research examines the unequal distribution of environmental risks across and within societies. While patterns of environmental injustice reveal that marginalized communities carry the greatest burden, to date, few scholars have examined the mutually constitutive relationships between environmental risks and intersectionally-subjected individuals and communities. In this article, we utilize intersectionial theory and tools to expose the ‘hidden’ costs associated with resource extraction throughout U.S. history, and to draw attention to the fact that these costs go beyond environmental risk and damage to include severe socio-cultural consequences for both the communities where extraction sites are situated and the individuals that comprise the labor force working at these operations. We also highlight how elites involved in resource extraction and development in the United States have capitalized on the socioeconomic and sociocultural marginalization of intersectionally-subjected populations to consolidate wealth and power. We do so across three extraction contexts: the California Gold Rush, coal mining in Appalachia, and uranium milling and mining in the four corner region. In closing, we explore the relevancy of this analytical approach to contemporary extraction contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Intersectionality
• environmental justice
• resource extraction
• mining

Acknowledgement

We wish to acknowledge the difficult struggles of all marginalized communities. We want to thank the foundational scholars in environmental justice and intersectional research for their critical contributions to the establishment and advancement of these fields, respectively. We would also like to thank Environmental Sociology and editor-in-chief Stewart Lockie for the opportunity to publish this piece in this special issue of the journal. We want to express our heartfelt gratitude to the reviewers and editor whose suggestions helped us improve this paper. Finally, we would like to thanks Colorado State University's School for Global Environmental Sustainability (SoGES) for their support of our Environmental Justice Working Group and consequently, this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stacia S. Ryder

Stacia S. Ryder is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Colorado State University. Her work as an environmental sociologist is focused on environmental conflict, inequality, and justice. In particular, Stacia uses an intersectional environmental justice lens to explore procedural injustices in the context of environmental law, policy, and decision making processes.