Review: Mark Stoddart on Environmental Justice in Canada

Julian Agyeman, Peter Cole, Randolph Haluza-DeLay and Pat O’Riley, eds., Speaking for Ourselves: Environmental Justice in Canada. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2009, 292 pp. $32.95 paper (978-0-7748-1619-9), $85.00 hardcover (978-0-7748-1618-2)

Speaking for Ourselves brings together scholars from across the environmental social sciences to examine the multiple forms that environmental justice takes in Canada. Prior research on environmental justice focused predominantly on the United States, where the concept gained sociological attention through research on racialized patterns of exposure to environmental risks and the social movements that organized against environmental racism. Like much American research on environmental justice, one of the recurring themes in Speaking for Ourselves is that the social justice dimensions of environmental politics often go unexamined by mainstream environmental organizations. However, the editors and contributors argue for a different understanding of environmental justice in Canada than in the United States. … Read more