Description

Gregory Shank, ed.

This double issue deals with the environmental crimes of entities with a global reach–the World Bank, the US military, the chemical industry, and toxic waste disposers–and the responses of activists and victims to these policies and practices. Do such practices constitute “crimes of globalization”? How can activist engagement and human rights law present obstacles? Among the social movements analyzed are those seeking to tax global financial transactions to help citizens; anti-military movements linked to issues of environmental and social justice; and the groundswell that led to passage of the first important toxic waste legislation in US history. Other essays confront the problem of reducing environmental degradation (whether labeled crime, regulatory violations, or just smart business practices) in market economies. “Sustainability” is a phrase that engenders a vague sense of goodwill toward the Third World, and the environment generally, but has done little to radically shift us away from top-down development strategies and oppressive global trading practices. Alternative environmental ethics are explored. The second set of articles covers the widening net of criminalization affecting the disempowered, and the retrograde racial politics associated with discourses on welfare mothers, the drug war, immigrants, violent schools, and Native Americans. George W. Bush’s administration promises to aggravate this tendency, while undermining traditional civil liberties and 30 years of environmental legislation.

Purchase articles (click on the author link to read the abstract and buy the pdf):

Gregory Shank, Overview: Globalization and Environmental Harm

David O. Friedrichs and Jessica Friedrichs, The World Bank and Crimes of Globalization: A Case Study

Déborah Berman Santana, Resisting Toxic Militarism: Vieques Versus the U.S. Navy

Vincenzo Ruggiero, ‘Attac’: A Global Social Movement?

Alan Block, Environmental Crime and Pollution: Wasteful Reflections

Rob White, Environmental Harm and the Political Economy of Consumption

Mario Petrucci, Sustainability — Long View or Long Word?

Vincenzo Ruggiero, Review of Pearce and Tombs, Toxic Capitalism: Corporate Crime and the Chemical Industry

Randall R. Beger, Expansion of Police Power in Public Schools and the Vanishing Rights of Students

Garry Rolison, Kristin A. Bates, Mary Jo Poole, and Michelle Jacob, Prisoners of War: Black Female Incarceration at the End of the 1980s

Lisa M. Poupart, Crime and Justice in American Indian Communities

Cecilia Menjívar and Sang Kil, For Their Own Good: Benevolent Rhetoric and Exclusionary Language in Public Officials’ Discourse on Immigrant-Related Issues

Rita Maran, A Report from the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, Durban, South Africa, 2001

Elizabeth Martínez, Social Justice Salutes Beverly Axelrod