|
Abstract:
|
Discourse surrounding the environment and nature in the United States has historically been focused on understandings of these terms as wilderness, pure/non-human, and as in opposition to culture and urban. As a result of this categorization, urban environments have not been thought of as part of nature or the environmental movement in the US, nor have peoples and cultures been considered as part of the rest of the natural world. Another implication of this distinction between nature as non-human/pure/wilderness and city as non-nature/culture is that it has led to a division between social justice and ecological well-being. One of the primary reasons that world religions and religious peoples have been slow to awaken to the environmental crisis (only in the past 30 years or so) is that religions and religious peoples see the environment as an issue that competes with social justice, which has been the primary concern of religious institutions. Finally, the split between city and wilderness belies a Euro-centric understanding of the environment and nature. This is one of the primary reasons that peoples of color have not been a huge part of the American Environmental Movement until recently. Wild nature has been a concern of those in higher classes which has traditionally been associated with whites in this country while inner-urban areas have become associated with the poorer classes, usually peoples of color in this country. Thus, for peoples of color, saving the whales is not as important as getting toxic chemicals out of the local drinking water. It is with the emergence of environmental justice and religious reflection upon the connections between social and ecological justice, that a genuine city-based environmentalism emerges. This paper will analyze the emergence of city environmentalism from the joint perspectives of religion and ecology and environmental justice. These two movements have opened up the categories of social and ecological justice, culture and nature, and civilized and wild. Specific case studies include: The Forum on Religion and Ecology, California Interfaith Power and Light, and the GreenAction Network in the San Francisco neighborhood Bayview/Hunter's Point.
|
