Elite Pollution, Environmental Justice, and the Making of Environmental Health

As both a concept and a social movement, “environmental justice” refers to the premise that every person has the right to live in a healthy environment regardless of their race/ethnicity, economic status, gender, or nationality. The concept asserts that there can be no sustainable ecology without social equity and no social equity without sustainable human lifeways and a healthy planet. Only approaches that incorporate both halves of this statement can go very far in meaningfully supporting human wellbeing and flourishing. This chapter proposes a structured approach rooted in critical health anthropology for the unified study of environmental health and justice. A specific focus of this perspective is the issue of environmental health in both senses of the term: the health of the environment and human health as shaped by the environment, and, especially, the interrelationship of these two core arenas of the anthropological project.