AN INTERSECTIONAL RISK APPROACH TO ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY

The aim of this article is to incorporate intersectional perspectives and feminist knowledges into environmental sociology. Whilst environmental sociology has developed its own critical theoretical frame to describe the social... [ view full abstract ]

The aim of this article is to incorporate intersectional perspectives and feminist knowledges into environmental sociology. Whilst environmental sociology has developed its own critical theoretical frame to describe the social construction of risk, its understanding of the complex multi-dimensionality of the social relations that shape the lived experience of risk is less developed. An analytical and integrating discourse that acknowledges the connectedness of these dimensions and the influence of their interactions on the representation, production, and reproduction of risk in society remains an as yet unrealized ambition. Intersectional risk theory shows that risk is constituted and produced in social and geographic spaces and the different power relations that prevails there, and as a consequence risk is not only defined and managed differently but intersections of privilege and subordination are themselves reproduced through risk management. Taking climate risks as a starting point, we propose a perspective for the study of risks that analyses the dynamic, ambiguous character of the doing of risk, our intent being to open up for analysis of the ways risk discourses are entangled with the doing of class, gender, and race as well as with the differentiations between human and nature.