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Improvising against the racial state in Atlanta: Reimagining agency in environmental justice

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Milligan

    (Georgia State University, USA)

  • Tyler McCreary

    (Florida State University, USA)

  • Na’Taki Osborne Jelks

Abstract

Recent scholarship on environmental justice highlights a concern about the relationship between the racial state and social movement strategy. This paper addresses the ingenuity of environmental justice organizing in the Proctor Creek and South River watersheds of Atlanta, Georgia, each home to predominantly Black communities and unjust flows of toxicants and sewage through urban creeks, streams, and rivers. We begin from critiques of the failure of institutionalized environmental justice and the state’s role in maintaining environmental racisms. To examine organizing responses to these circumstances, we analyze the improvisational politics of social movements in the context of the racial state, theoretically drawing from Charles Lee’s Ingenious Citizenship (2016). Empirically investigating the work of Atlanta community organizers, we emphasize pathways of strategic innovation among environmental justice organizers that improvise against the racial state even while negotiating with it. The article presents evidence of organizers challenging dominant modes of quantifying environmental injustice, appropriating and repurposing the language of environmental restoration, and improvising in the spaces of environmental governance. While state recognition has sought to contain or co-opt movements, we demonstrate the continuing vitality of mobilizations that simultaneously make demands of the state and rupture the governing forms of knowledge and practice that reinforce environmental racisms.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Milligan & Tyler McCreary & Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, 2021. "Improvising against the racial state in Atlanta: Reimagining agency in environmental justice," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 39(7), pages 1586-1605, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:envirc:v:39:y:2021:i:7:p:1586-1605
    DOI: 10.1177/23996544211038944
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Kate Driscoll Derickson & Danny MacKinnon, 2015. "Toward an Interim Politics of Resourcefulness for the Anthropocene," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 105(2), pages 304-312, March.
    2. Kirk Jalbert & Abby Kinchy & Simona Perry, 2014. "Civil society research and Marcellus Shale natural gas development: results of a survey of volunteer water monitoring organizations," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 4(1), pages 78-86, March.
    3. Kirk Jalbert & Abby Kinchy & Simona Perry, 2014. "Erratum to: Civil society research and Marcellus Shale natural gas development: results of a survey of volunteer water monitoring organizations," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 4(1), pages 121-121, March.
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