Hughey Matthew W
University of Connecticut, Manchester Hall, 344 Mansfield Road, Unit 1068, Storrs, CT USA.
Affiliate Faculty at University of Barcelona, 06269 Barcelona, Spain.
Theory Soc. 2022 Nov 9:1-33. doi: 10.1007/s11186-022-09505-0.
I examine how white British members of a London-area environmental group conceptualize race in relation to ecological disasters. Based on a five-year (2018-2022) ethnographic study, members employed racialized narratives and symbolic boundaries to construct who was the of disasters, who had the moral responsibility or to remediate disasters, and who possessed the adequate resources and to fix disasters. Together, these narratives formed a which functioned to demarcate the symbolic boundaries of an ideal, white racial identity that was intimately crocheted with notions of authentic guilt and remorse, responsibility and liability, work ethics, competent knowledge, resource mobilization, moral commitment, and racial paternalism and superiority. Through the pursuit of this White racial ideal, members frequently conceptualized ecological disasters throughout the non-white world as the fault of specific actions by non-White people, identified unique racialized actors as the proper responsible parties for working on the remediation of ecological disasters, and also assigned particular White people from Westernized, industrial, democratic states as the only people in possession of the appropriate knowledge, resources, and character to clean-up and manage a healthy environment.
我研究了伦敦地区一个环境组织的英国白人成员如何将种族概念与生态灾难联系起来。基于一项为期五年(2018 - 2022年)的人种志研究,该组织成员运用了种族化的叙事和象征性界限来构建谁是灾难的受害者,谁有道德责任或义务来补救灾难,以及谁拥有足够的资源和能力来解决灾难。这些叙事共同形成了一种话语,其作用是划定一种理想的白人种族身份的象征性界限,这种身份与真正的内疚和悔恨、责任与义务、职业道德、专业知识、资源调动、道德承诺以及种族家长主义和优越感紧密相连。通过追求这种白人种族理想,该组织成员经常将非白人世界的生态灾难概念化为非白人特定行为的过错,将独特的种族化行为体确定为应对生态灾难补救工作的适当责任方,还将来自西方化、工业化、民主国家的特定白人视为唯一拥有清理和管理健康环境所需适当知识、资源和品质的人。