Advancing Du Bois’s legacy through emancipatory environmental sociology

ABSTRACT

Environmental sociology, while dedicating significant scholarship to issues of environmental racism and environmental justice, remains a predominately white subdiscipline that has not enjoyed general relevance across sociology. One of the drivers of the dominance of white perspectives in the subdiscipline is the lack of a core theoretical pillar that anchors the importance of racism to structuring inequitable environments. W.E.B. Du Bois not only offered a foundational approach to sociological inquiry but also a deeply material perspective on the maintenance of racial inequities. Du Bois’s approach to sociology lays the path for a liberatory approach that documents the scope of a problem, interrogates its drivers, and works with affected communities and allied resources to develop alternative models with transformative outcomes. This paper argues that an environmental understanding was original to Du Bois’s methodology as demonstrated through his concept of the total environment. He connected inequitable environments to the legacy of racial capitalism, which he saw as driven by anti-Blackness. His solution was to advance Black solidarity and community cooperatives through Pan-Africanism. Du Bois’ framework establishes an approach to conducting emancipatory environmental sociology that provides theoretical and methodological legitimacy for engaging in partnership with marginalized communities to advance their goals towards liberation.

KEYWORDS:

• Racial capitalism
• environmental justice
• public sociology
• knowledge production
• community control
• community science

Acknowledgments

While Iam solely responsible for the content of this specific manuscript, I would like to express my appreciation and gratitude for the friendship, support, and collegiality of the members of the Community Driven Flint Action Council: Pastor Cynthia Watkins, Well Church International Ministries, Flint, MI; Rev. Sarah Bailey, PhD, MA, Bridges into the Future, Flint, MI; Pastor Ronnie Wiggins, HQLM Vision Center, Flint, MI; Laura Sullivan, PhD, Kettering University, Flint, MI; Melissa Mays, Water You Fighting For, Flint, MI; and Kent Key, PhD, Community Based Organization Partners, Flint, MI. Additionally, I would like to thank Aldon Morris, Patrick D. Anderson, and Devparna Roy for reviewing an earlier version of the manuscript and offering constructive and encouraging feedback. Finally, I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their time and effort to offer rigorous and thoughtful reviews, which assuredly strengthened the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Research reported in this paper was supported in part by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number K01ES029115. The content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Notes on contributors

Jennifer S. Carrera

Jennifer S. Carrera is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Environmental Science and Policy at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on environmental justice issues around water access and water quality, with an emphasis on low-income communities in the United States. Dr. Carrera’s research focuses on community capacity to lead environmental health and health equity research and pathways through which academic partners can support community research agendas. She uses a racial equity lens in considering the production and management of environmental health knowledge. Dr. Carrera is currently engaged in community based participatory research with partners in Flint, Michigan. This work considers the local knowledge of Flint residents in responding to a public health crisis and the implications that this knowledge has on the broader understanding of environmental health literacy. As an environmental sociologist, Dr. Carrera is particularly interested in advancing theoretical frames exploring racial capitalism, its impact on marginalized environments, and the ability of residents in those environments to mobilize citizenship claims to promote the wellbeing of their communities. Additionally, she is interested in increasing capacity for sympathetic academics to support the leadership directions of communities in the pursuit of community expressed needs and goals.