The Conspicuous Nature of Power

Abstract

As an introduction, we couched this special issue on social and environmental justice within unsettling nature of prejudice. Prejudice, subtly and overtly, contribute to injustice and in nuanced ways. Our authors tackled those ways through an analysis of need to critically rethink use and provision of greenspaces for tackling homelessness (Rose); importance of consideration of having spaces for youth development and empowerment (Kelly & Outley); need for depth in conceptualizing ethnicity to understand meaning-making and experiential context (Madsen, Radel, & Endter-Wada); food insecurity and access to Farmers markets (Farmer, Chancellor, Robinson, West, & Weddell); challenges of creating accessibility to opportunities among those that are underprivileged with traditionally privileged programs (Paisley, Jostad, & Sibthorp); and, acknowledgment that personal identities and experiences greatly influence our research and affinity to matters of justice (Trussell). But as we acknowledged, prejudice is only an echo or evidence marker that injustice has occurred. Prejudice, in itself, does not create injustice and oppression, power does. With this in mind, we support a perspective that our roles as researchers are to erect and bring about new schemas of politicization rather than defend any existing position, in order conceive new forms of social realities (Foucault, 1977, p. 211).In our call for papers, we noted that Iris Young (1990) outlined five areas or of and evidence of manifested power: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, imperialism, and violence. Exploitation is a process in that product of labor of one social group benefits another. Marginalization is process and result of isolation, denial, or expulsion of one social group in actively participating in society by decision-making of another social group. Powerlessness is barring and exclusion of a social group in decision-making structures that limits groups' ability to formulate opportunities and fulfillment of capacities. Cultural imperialism is process that ideals, beliefs, and attitudes of one social group are enforced upon another social group through institutional polices and practices. Lastly, Violence is a process that utilizes institutional condoning or enabling threat and actual use of physical attack to harm, humiliate, and terrorize a social group. Each of these faces, function as criteria for determining whether individuals and groups are oppressed, and that, the presence of any of these five conditions is sufficient for calling a group oppressed (p. 41).We also noted that Bunyan Bryant (1995) extended notions of injustice but also ways that empowerment could occur through our interactions with environment by way of cultural norms and values, rules, regulations, behaviors, policies, and decisions to support sustainable communities, where people can interact with confidence that their environment is safe, nurturing, and productive (p. 6). Key elements of environmental justice are: procedural justice, distributive justice, corrective justice, environmental equity, and environmental racism. Unlike Youngs (1990) faces of oppression that are distinct from one another, each of these elements represents foci of analysis on processes and structures of equity and rectification on manner in which environment does not harm growth of people or growth of environment is not hindered through our own actions. Advancing environmental justice has also necessitated need to ensure that full participation of communities that are adversely affected by environmental decision-making, and that policies benefit all and not just those at that table.Unlike privilege or even prejudice, (oppressive) power cannot be simply unpacked since it is always operating, even countering efforts of anti-oppressive practices. …