Complicating communities: an intersectional approach to women’s environmental justice narratives in the Rocky Mountain West

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, I work to demonstrate the complementarity between intersectional and environmental justice research frames, foregrounding an argument for nuanced approaches to understanding pathways to community empowerment and a recommitment to critical praxis. Using the oral histories of women (n = 10) involved in environmental and food justice projects from two separate Rocky Mountain West communities, I explore how gender interlocks with other identities (such as femininity, motherhood, and citizenship subjectivities) to mediate environmental realities, experiences of injustice, and claims for recognition. Within my analysis, I focus on how the congruence or contestation of local hegemonic identity norms may impact resource distribution to the organizations and communities these women work with. My findings suggest that the women, and organizations, who conform to hegemonic expectations face less relational, community, or political censure. I use these findings to argue that linking the performances (supportive and transgressive) of hegemonic femininity of food and environmental justice organizations and their members is an important conceptual approach needed to examine power relations; whether they have the potential to disrupt hegemonic norms and institutionalized social inequalities in communities, or conversely how these transgressions help to construct structural environmental inequalities.