The Subtle Production of Quiescence: Tracing the Neoliberalization of Environmental Justice Policy Implementation

Abstract

Background: California lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 617 (AB 617) in 2017 to help remedy the fact that the state's carbon cap-and-trade system ignored toxic air contaminants disproportionately clustered in racially marginalized, working-class, and Indigenous communities. AB 617 authorizes non-neoliberal approaches to change that are essential for addressing environmental injustice, and many AB 617 implementation committee members desire stronger environmental regulations on hazardous industrial activity. However, AB 617 implementation to date has taken strikingly neoliberal forms. In this article, we ask how AB 617 implementation became a site of quiescence about neoliberalism—that is, one in which community member participants' individual grievances did not translate into collective demands for counter-neoliberal policy implementation. Methods: To trace the law's implementation, we draw on ethnographic observation of AB 617 community steering committee meetings in which AB 617 implementation plans were developed, observation of other related meetings, and confidential interviews with committee members. Results and Discussion: We find that community quiescence about neoliberalism stems not only from limited resources and regulatory constraints, as others have noted, but also from subtle practices. The mere presence of powerful industry actors in the steering committees has inhibited community members from challenging industry's environmental impacts. In addition, powerful actors' “community” discourse obscures industry actors' conflicts of interest on these committees and their outsized influence over these committees' recommendations and has curtailed discussion of regulatory restrictions on hazardous industrial activity. Conclusion: Although AB 617 was ostensibly designed to empower residents who have historically been excluded from regulatory decision making, dynamics of AB 617 implementation effectively reproduce industry's disproportionate influence over regulatory decision making. Intentionally or not, these practices have the effect of silencing residents' and activists' interest in securing stronger regulatory restrictions on hazardous industrial activity.