The construction of environmental justice: Warren County, North Carolina

By seeking to ameliorate environmental problems while also working to alleviate poverty and oppression, the construct of environmental justice has transformed environmental activism and altered the national environmental agenda. The controversy over the Warren County landfill is seen as the birth place of the environmental justice movement. Despite the importance assigned to Warren County, there has been no thorough analysis of the events. In this study, I analyze the Warren County events using a social movement theory which integrates issues of strategy and identity. I show that when the mostly white opposition changed their strategy to direct action and needed assistance from seasoned civil rights activists, the political and cultural context of Warren County created the necessary ingredients for this unlikely alliance. As a result of the alliance, the collective action frame changed from "Not In My Backyard" (NIMBY) to "environmental racism." The fear of loosing local control over a land use decision was the conceptual link between the broad injustice frame of environmental racism and the earlier, more narrow, NIMBY frame. Environmental racism was the catalyst to the more elaborative master frame of environmental justice which brought into question the entire hazardous waste policy.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio