Representation and Environmental Justice: Exploring Marginalization, Resistance and Empowerment in Environmental Representations of and from the Periphery

Dear Colleagues,

Genealogy is now accepting submissions for a Special Issue on the theme of Representation and Environmental Justice. Representation is deeply implicated in issues of environmental justice. It can be argued that how human, non-human/more-than-human communities, knowledges and environments are constructed in environmental discourses, i.e., their representation, is key to whether they are treated equitably across space and time. Environmental injustice at the discursive level is clearly visible in cases of environmental racism, marginalization of traditional ecological knowledge, colonial conservation, etc. The significance of representation vis-à-vis environmental justice goals is evinced by its emphasis in postcolonial environmental legislations such as for example Bolivia’s Mother Earth Law, which emphasizes equity between human and non-human communities on Earth, and the Indian Forest Rights Act which grants rights to access, sustainably utilize and conserve forests to communities that depend on them. In their struggles for environmental justice, increasingly, Indigenous peoples are attempting interventions at the discursive level, questioning the legitimacy of the paradigms under which global environmental destruction has occurred and championing their lifestyles as alternatives to these.

This special issue aims to contribute to scholarship on the entanglement of representation with issues of environmental justice. How representations have enabled or constrained environmental justice is its central focus and from this many lines of enquiry may arise – for example: How is Indigenous knowledge represented in mainstream conservation science? How are forest-dependent communities constructed by governments in policies and policy implementation initiatives? To what extent are rural women’s concerns prioritized in environmental legislation? How does the media represent the environmental concerns of the poor in the Global South? How do discourses relating to inter-generational justice influence climate change mitigation efforts? All of these questions will be brought to bear on the central theme of the discursive roots of environmental justice/injustice.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400-600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the corresponding guest editor ([email protected]) or to the Genealogy editorial office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the special issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review. Please note that for invited contributions there will be no article processing charge. Please submit your abstract by 31 August 2023.

Dr. Radhika Borde
Dr. Johanna Ennser-Kananen
Dr. Deniz Ortactepe Hart
Guest Editors

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genealogy is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• environmental justice
• representation
• marginalization
• empowerment
• resistance
• postcolonial critiques
• equity
• rights
• traditional ecological knowledge
• environmental movements/struggles