When examining the field of oil sociology, many scholars recognize its multidimensional nature, ‎encompassing a range of scales, geopolitics, and geographies. Oil is intertwined with local and ‎global contexts, as well as material and social aspects, and all these dimensions are ‎interconnected. Attempting to separate the spaces of oil consumption from those of production ‎would oversimplify the subject intellectually and pose methodological challenges. On the other ‎hand, the extensive range of agents and actors contributed to creating a socio-spatial arrangement ‎of oil highlights the complexity of analyzing the oil industry. The multitude of actors, ‎infrastructures, processes, and conceptualizations involved in the oil assemblage can be ‎overwhelming (Apple et al., 2015) and can lead to a sense of "intellectual vertigo"(Appel et al., ‎‎2015: 9). It is indeed impractical to address all these aspects within a single framework. ‎However, it is crucial to recognize that while the oil assemblage has a global scope, its specific ‎manifestations are inherently tied to particular places. Oil is inherently place-specific, always ‎situated within a specific time and space, and embedded within a localized political economy ‎‎(Watts, 2012). Consequently, the contributing agents and factors within the oil assemblage differ ‎from one place to another.‎

The term "oil assemblage" is commonly used in scholarly literature, but its definition varies ‎depending on the influential and significant agents identified by different scholars. According to ‎Michael Watts (2021), the oil assemblage encompasses diverse actors, including commodity ‎trading houses, state actors, investment banks, engineering and service companies, shipping, ‎refining, logistics, state and private security forces, and various forms of surveillance. The oil ‎assemblage also includes actors that may not initially appear relevant to oil, such as oilfield ‎insurgents, militias, local artisanal refiners, criminal organizations, trade unions, non-‎governmental organizations, advocacy organizations (both local and global), multilateral ‎development institutions, development assistance agencies, and transnational regulatory ‎institutions.‎

Carola Hein (2021) raises criticism against the concept of oil assemblage, claiming that it fails to ‎adequately address the design and representation of actual buildings, cities, and landscapes. I ‎argue, however, the term oil assemblage is not rigid but rather adaptable, allowing for the ‎inclusion of spatial factors when necessary for analysis. Recognizing the interconnectedness of ‎various agents and factors operating at different scales is essential. For instance, Hannah Apple et ‎al.'s definition of the term incorporates more spatial dimensions. They describe the oil assemblage ‎as a "worldwide network of lines, axes, hubs, spokes, nodes, points, blocks, and flows" (Appel et ‎al., 2015, cited in Simpson, 2020). ‎

The concept of oil assemblage can also be attributed to the network-actor theory proposed by ‎Deleuze and Guattari (1988) (Ehsani, 2014). This theory challenges the prevailing notion of a ‎natural progression in the evolutionary history of the capitalist industrial order. Kaveh Ehsani ‎‎(2014) contrasts "assemblage" with "emergence" to examine the history of oil as a result of ‎intentional and sometimes accidental acts of human construction. This history is characterized by ‎friction, uncertainty, and grounded in praxis. Social and historical encounters between the ‎material world and the actions of diverse and unequal social actors primarily shape the history of ‎oil. These actors make calculated decisions that may not be easily categorized as "rational" or ‎predictable. The success or failure of these decisions is determined by the balance of power ‎relations under specific circumstances (Ehsani, 2014).‎

In oil literature, the terms "oil complex" and "oil assemblage" are used interchangeably (e.g., ‎Huber, 2021). The concept of a commodity complex originated from Harriet Friedmann's work, ‎where she used it to distinguish between networks of social and political-economic relations ‎surrounding the provision of specific and strategically significant food commodities. Examples ‎include the "wheat complex," "durable food complex," and "meat complex." Although Friedmann ‎did not specifically focus on the "oil complex," one can observe a similar formation of social, ‎political, and economic networks revolving around oil.‎

Carola Hein offers an alternative to Watts' concept of the oil assemblage by proposing the term ‎‎"Petroleumscape." According to Hein, this term captures not only the social implications but also ‎the infrastructural and spatial dimensions associated with petroleum. She criticizes the existing oil ‎literature for neglecting spatial analysis as if oil were a mystical substance fueling economies ‎without leaving a spatial imprint. Hein asserts that petroleum, as a physical material, has a ‎pervasive influence on physical spaces such as architecture, cities, landscapes, and more. She ‎emphasizes the need to recognize and study the profound impact of petroleum on the built ‎environment.‎

The concept of Petroleumscape, therefore, refers to a layered physical and social landscape that ‎evolves over time through human activities. It connects urban and rural spaces, culture, and ‎nature, as well as tangible materials and intangible practices. Various spatial manifestations of oil, ‎such as refineries, storage sites, office buildings, and gas stations, are interconnected through ‎their association with this singular commodity and its associated industrial actors. Despite each ‎component of the layered landscape serving different functions, being located in distinct places, ‎and possessing diverse characteristics, scales, forms, and topologies, they ultimately form part of ‎a unified spatial system. In essence, the concept of Petroleumscape provides a conceptual tool for ‎discussing the role of space as an active agent and the ways in which people inhabit the built ‎environment shaped by petroleum.‎

Although the concept of the "petroleumscape" is useful for understanding the local and global ‎dynamics of the oil industry, Hein's emphasis on its "globality" can lead to a loss of analytical ‎precision and oversimplification. Hein argues for the existence of a singular, all-encompassing ‎‎"petroleumscape" that incorporates multiple layers and aspects, aiming to transcend segmented, ‎mono-disciplinary, and localized approaches to petroleum spaces. While it is true that petroleum ‎dynamics are largely influenced by global forces, focusing on the global scale limits our ability to ‎examine specific agents and actors who interact with the petroleumscape in diverse ways. These ‎interactions are shaped by local and regional ecological, political, and economic factors that ‎significantly vary within the industry.‎

For example, as an illustration, the portrayal of the "industrial" petroleumscape as a “standardized ‎and uniform landscape” does not accurately reflect reality. Petroleum infrastructures are shaped ‎by the specific material properties of the extracted oil, which vary from place to place. The ‎regional and national political economy surrounding oil extraction determines operational ‎standards, including technology usage, safety measures, acceptable contamination levels, etc. ‎This fallacy is valid for the "ancillary" petroleumscape as well, which, in Hein’s ‎conceptualization, consists of various structures indirectly related but necessary for the ‎functioning of the petroleum industry, such as streets, housing, and leisure facilities, which “serve ‎as a means of branding.” I argue that this is not the case in all contexts. For instance, in post-‎World War I Khuzestan, the construction of hospitals and investment in education by the Anglo-‎Iranian Oil Company were responses to prevailing discontent, epidemic diseases, and the ‎emergence of social issues at that specific time, not merely for branding.‎

Conversely, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, transnational oil companies operating in the ‎Niger Delta, for instance, have not invested significantly in such areas. Similarly, the Iranian ‎National Oil Company does not provide healthcare and educational facilities in its modern-day ‎oil towns like Asaluyeh in southern Iran. In general, I argue the petroleumscape, while having ‎global dimensions, encompasses significant temporal and spatial variations, resulting in a ‎heterogeneous rather than homogeneous landscape.‎

Another concept that potentially promotes the perception of petroleum as an interconnected ‎socio-spatial system is "planetary urbanization." Many scholars writing about oil and gas spaces ‎within the urban political ecology refer to “planetary urbanization” (e.g., Simpson, 2020; Geroldi ‎and Pessina, 2021; Couling, 2021). Neil Brenner and Christian Schmid (2011) developed the ‎concept of planetary urbanization. In essence, this concept offers an alternative understanding of ‎what is traditionally viewed as "urban" and encourages us to recognize broader connections and ‎linkages that facilitate the process of urbanization. Brenner and Schmid propose that spaces ‎typically seen as the "non-urban realm," including natural parks, oceans, deserts, and atmosphere, ‎as well as oil fields, pipelines, petrochemical plants, and so on, are all part of "the worldwide ‎urban fabric" (Geroldi and Pessina, 2021). ‎

Therefore, all spaces of oil extraction, even though located in remote areas, are considered ‎‎urbanized areas, as much as the sites of consumers (cities) are. Brenner stresses that ‎urbanization ‎contains both “concentration” and “extension,” and while the urban theory has focused ‎on ‎processes of “concentration,” it has ignored the broader areas and sites that support these ‎‎processes, such as oil production sites or power stations (Geroldi and Pessina, 2021; Couling ‎‎‎2021).‎ ‎

Simpson (2020) integrates planetary urbanization theory with postcolonial, dependency, and ‎world system theories, all of which highlight the interconnectedness and mutual constitution of ‎various spaces within the global capitalist economy through resource extraction and exchange. ‎However, unlike the latter theories, which focus on analyzing the unequal "core-periphery" ‎relationship between extraction sites and consumption sites, proponents of planetary urbanization ‎theory avoid such dichotomies. Instead, they argue that the spaces of extraction are generated by ‎the same underlying logic that has produced cities (Simpson, 2020).‎

While the concept of planetary urbanization helps understand the interconnected nature of ‎seemingly disparate spaces, it still operates within a dichotomous framework where extraction ‎and consumption sites are geographically separate but interconnected dialectically. However, in ‎this study, I intentionally avoid such a dichotomy and argue that cases where the geography of ‎oil exploration aligns with an urbanized geography are not exceptional occurrences. This is ‎observed both in the Global North and South, necessitating a more nuanced theoretical analysis. ‎

In this research, I have employed the concept of planetary urbanization to establish the scope of ‎my study, which extends beyond the confines of the municipality of Ahwaz. It encompasses ‎larger areas that, in conjunction with the dense and populated urban region, constitute the socio-‎environmental hinterland of oil production in Ahwaz. In this approach I am aware of and avoid ‎the tendency of the concept of planetary urbanization to generalize urban experiences across ‎different contexts that can neglect the nuances of how different populations, particularly ‎marginalized groups, experience the city (Roy, 2016; Peake, 2020; Robinson & Roy, 2016).‎

The exploration, extraction, and transportation of oil often necessitate the establishment ‎of residential camps to accommodate workers, managers, and engineers. In some cases, ‎these camps evolve into fully-fledged towns, while in others, they may decline or ‎disappear as oil resources deplete. Throughout this process, oil also transforms the natural ‎environment within a specific social, economic, and political framework. It gives rise to ‎an urban landscape that is characterized by an uneven distribution of hazardous materials and ‎pollution.‎

The term "oil city" is commonly utilized in the oil literature, particularly in the context of ‎the Global South. It is often used interchangeably with phrases such as "urban built ‎environment of oil," "oil boomtowns," "oil towns," and "petro-city." The concept of an oil ‎city encompasses two crucial elements: the oil industry's role as a socio-political actor and ‎the urban landscape as an analytical framework (Bet-Shlimon, 2019). Oil towns are an ‎integral part of the oil industry's infrastructure network, much like refineries, pipelines, ‎and oil rigs. As Fuccaro (2021) suggests, they serve as exceptions to the invisibility of oil ‎and provide insight into the diverse history of oil.‎

The urban landscapes associated with oil exploration exhibit remarkable diversity in terms ‎of their geographical locations and the supporting infrastructure they rely on (Fuccaro, ‎‎2021). These areas can be near extraction sites, pipelines, refineries, and petrochemical ‎factories. Some oil towns are strategically built around ports, which serve as vital nodes ‎for trans-ocean oil transportation.‎

Oil cities have played central role in the extensive industrial conurbations that sustain oil ‎extraction infrastructure. Since the initial discovery of oil in Iran, these towns have been ‎instrumental in shaping the new geographies of petroleum refinement and transport, ‎which in turn have had profound implications for local, regional, and global geopolitics ‎‎(Fuccaro, 2021).‎

Oil cities often served as urban "hinges" that brought together diverse groups of people, ‎often characterized by spatial and social segregation (Fuccaro, 2021). These cities ‎emerged as powerful symbols of collective memory and shared experiences, embodying ‎models of modern urban life. Besides internal migration, people from various countries ‎and regions, including India, Europe, the United States, and other parts of the world, ‎were drawn to oil cities in the Middle East, resulting in unprecedented population ‎mobility. Skilled and unskilled workers flocked to these cities, fostering a dynamic and ‎cosmopolitan environment transcending traditional boundaries.‎

Early oil towns were primarily characterized as company towns, where the concept of ‎social engineering through urban planning aimed to create a more productive working ‎class (Vergara et al., 2011). This prevalent practice spanned the 19th and 20th centuries ‎and played a significant role in expanding national economies by supporting extractive ‎industries in sparsely populated regions. As a result, these company towns brought more ‎land, natural resources, and people under the control of corporations.‎

In the 20th century, multinational companies from the Global North extended their ‎influence by exporting ideas about work discipline, race, and gender to other parts of the ‎world as they established company towns in extraction geographies (Vergara et al., 2011). ‎While these companies shaped social relations in these towns through various means such ‎as education, welfare, and leisure programs, it is important to recognize that working-class ‎communities actively reshaped and adapted these programs to meet their own specific ‎needs and aspirations. Thus, there was an interplay between the companies' influence and ‎the working-class communities' agency in shaping the social fabric of these company ‎towns.‎

Company towns can be seen as urban environments that function as factories for the ‎reproduction of the labor force (Ehsani, 2003). In the context of the Middle East, early oil ‎cities were established as company towns by transnational oil companies, which ‎implemented a hierarchical model of urban development wherever they operated. This ‎model aimed to maintain spatial isolation, foster internal stratification, and incite tensions ‎based on race, ethnicity, and social class among the employees, serving as a strategy for ‎labor control employed by these oil companies (Ehsani, 2018). Colonial oil companies, ‎through producing the urban environment and distributing infrastructures, ‎pollution, and ‎wastes, aimed to control the social reproduction of residents. ‎

The emergence of oil towns in the Middle East marked a significant departure from the ‎existing towns and cities in the region (Fuccaro, 2021). These emerging oil towns ‎represented radical shifts from the urban past, evolving into transnational enclaves that ‎mirrored the global influence of the controlling companies. In contrast to the architectural ‎traditions of the nearby historical cities, the oil towns in the Middle East were ‎intentionally designed to resemble British and American suburbs, drawing inspiration ‎from the concept of the ‎garden city (Ehsani, 2014). This deliberate urban design not only ‎transformed the physical landscape but also brought about a rupture in the traditional ‎lifestyle of the local population.‎

Several geographers and historians have devoted their attention to critically analyzing the ‎spatial and symbolic dimensions of oil capitalism (e.g., Crinson, 1997; Salas, 2009; Alissa, ‎‎2012; Ehsani, 2014; al-Nakib, 2014; Bet-Shlimon, 2019; Fuccaro, 2013). These scholarly ‎works primarily explore the socio-spatial features of oil company towns and the unique ‎lifestyles that emerged within them. By studying these contexts, researchers aim to ‎uncover the complex relationships between oil extraction, urban development, and the ‎social fabric of these communities (Mortaheb, 2020).‎

Arbella Bet-Shlimon's "The Politics and Ideology of Urban Development in Iraq's Oil ‎City" (2013) investigates the impact of oil's political and social dimensions on the ‎trajectory of urban development in Kirkuk before the 1958 revolution. Bet-Shlimon ‎analyzes how oil's properties influenced the shaping of the city's urban landscape. She ‎argues that the oil industry's resource superiority allowed the Iraq Petroleum Company ‎‎(IPC) to lead in developing housing, water, and infrastructure, surpassing the local ‎municipality’s efforts.‎

Farah al-Nakib's "Kuwait's Modern Spectacle" (2013) uncovers the paradoxes of oil-‎driven modernization in Kuwait from 1950 until the Iraqi invasion of 1990. Al-Nakib ‎explores the contradictions between ambitious state-run mega-urban projects and the ‎everyday urban experiences of Kuwait's capital city. The modernist urban planning and ‎development from the mid-20th century prioritized functional zoning and suburban ‎expansion at the expense of the city’s historic communal and diverse nature. Al-Nakib ‎argues that this shift has resulted in increased social tensions and a detachment from the ‎communal responsibilities that once characterized Kuwaiti society. She suggests that ‎reconnecting with the integrative and diverse aspects of Kuwait’s pre-oil urban life is key ‎to resolving current social challenges and revitalizing Kuwait's urban identity.‎

Nelida Fuccaro's work "Shaping the Urban Life of Oil in Bahrain" (2013) provides a ‎micro-level analysis of the social and cultural consequences of Bahrain's oil boom. ‎Fuccaro highlights oil company towns as harbingers of new leisure and consumer culture, ‎demonstrating how emerging forms of public communication, including independent and ‎government-controlled press and cinema, as well as oil propaganda practices, shaped ‎influential models of urban and suburban life embraced by both expatriates and Bahraini ‎citizens.‎

Miguel Tinker Salas's book "The Enduring Legacy" (2009) explains how oil camps in ‎Venezuela served as social and cultural laboratories, introducing new models of work, ‎social life, consumerism, leisure, and citizenship. Salas explores the architectural design of ‎company towns, showing how it was utilized to reinforce social divisions based on race ‎and occupation. Reem Alissa's study "Building for Oil" (2012) examines the ‎transformative role of oil in Kuwait's political, social, and cultural landscape, particularly ‎in shaping everyday urban life. Alissa argues that company towns, along with other ‎actors, played a crucial role in fostering urban modernity in Kuwait. She explores the ‎planning and architectural practices of the British oil company, which mirrored racial ‎ideologies and economic hierarchies. She showcases how socio-spatial engineering ‎introduced new family and neighborhood life models for Kuwaiti employees. These ‎studies show the similarities between oil urbanization in colonized territories. All these ‎cases share the emphasis of urban planning on racial and occupational segregation. ‎

Beyond company towns, another distinct spatial dimension exists shaped by the presence ‎of oil. These spaces emerge organically within preexisting human habitats, enveloping the ‎oil industry's spatial realm. These areas often attract the impoverished segments of the ‎working class or/and serve as living spaces for surplus labor awaiting employment ‎opportunities. These spaces are characterized by various forms of violence, including ‎dispossession, ecological destruction, and environmental pollution.‎

Communities residing in or adjacent to oil concessions bear the brunt of the unequal ‎burden of pollution and violence associated with extractive activities while reaping few ‎benefits from the wealth generated. Dissenting voices are often silenced through the ‎pervasive use of threats, patronage networks, and corporate compensation. This ‎perpetuates a cycle of marginalization and powerlessness (Reed, 2009).‎

Oil production, particularly in the ‎Global South but not exclusive to it, has been a catalyst ‎for the production of suffering among marginalized populations (Auyero and Swistun, ‎‎2009). The poor in these regions are disproportionately affected, facing heightened risks ‎of violence and health issues and enduring rather than thriving under the influence of oil ‎capitalism. Their everyday lives are inevitably intertwined with the presence of toxins, as ‎cohabiting with such hazards has become an inescapable reality (Davis, 2018).‎

These communities' existence and well-being are deeply intertwined with the dynamics of ‎oil money and politics, with urban services reflecting this reality (Valdivia, 2018). In the ‎case of Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, a prolonged disaster unfolded during the 1920s ‎and 1930s. Indigenous communities living in the vicinity were subjected to polluted ‎water, deadly fires, and numerous oil-related accidents, leaving a lasting impact on their ‎lives and surroundings (Oritz, 2020).‎

Kristin Reed's research on the oil industry in Angola delves into the intricate dynamics of ‎state-corporate resource control strategies, such as concession contracts, military ‎campaigns, and corporate compensation. Through her analysis, she reveals that these ‎strategies emerge from specific convergences of violence, exclusion, and environmental ‎degradation (Reed, 2009: 2). By examining the local context near extraction areas, Reed ‎uncovers the profound impacts on traditional livelihoods and the environment. She ‎demonstrates how establishing oil enclaves reinforces exclusionary practices, effectively ‎shutting out local populations from accessing economic and ecological sustenance. ‎Despite the concentrated benefits reaped within these enclaves, the externalities extend ‎beyond their boundaries. Environmental degradation, political repression, and military ‎interventions permeate surrounding areas, exacerbating the socio-ecological challenges ‎faced by marginalized communities. Reed's work sheds light on the intricate interplay ‎between power, resource extraction, and social and ecological consequences, prompting ‎critical reflections on the complexities of oil-driven development and the imperative of ‎addressing its exclusionary and harmful effects.  For Reed, the boundaries of oil city is ‎limited to the planned enclave that was designed to reside the oil employees in which the ‎benefits are distributed. In this perspective, marginalized geographies are not viewed as ‎an internal and indispensable part of the enclaved oil city; instead, they are places that are ‎negatively “impacted” by oil development. Her view is bound to the limitations of ‎‎“cityims” that come up short in shedding light on the production of subaltern populations ‎and their geographies as an internal to the process of oil urban development. ‎

Residing in close proximity to oil facilities has a significant impact on individuals' sense ‎of place (Davis, 2018). The environmental consequences associated with living near oil ‎can manifest as what Nixon (2011) calls "slow violence." This form of harm occurs ‎gradually and out of immediate sight, making it easy for its destructive impact to go ‎unnoticed across time and space. As a result, the most severe ramifications are often not ‎recognized as harm at all.‎

Living in the vicinity of toxic materials present in oil infrastructure often intersects with ‎racial and ethnic dynamics. Many instances reveal that communities residing near oil ‎infrastructure tend to be racialized communities. This phenomenon has been described in ‎scholarly literature as "petrochemical colonialism" (Bullard, 1993), "toxic imperialism" ‎‎(Walker, 2012), "necropolises" (Davis, 2018), and “environmental sacrifice zones,” where ‎the negligent behavior of the oil industry and government authorities may be perceived as ‎tolerable and acceptable (Hein & Lessoff, 2021).‎

Clyde Woods (2008) shows that the energy sector plays a crucial role in perpetuating ‎ecological and economic vulnerability through a process he refers to as "asset stripping." ‎Woods highlights how the oil and gas industry has contributed to the degradation of ‎public assets such as health, fisheries, waterways, air quality, and wetlands in Louisiana. ‎As a result, this has made the Black community in New Orleans particularly vulnerable to ‎the devastating impacts of events like Hurricane Katrina. The exploitation of natural ‎resources and the associated environmental degradation have disproportionately affected ‎marginalized communities, exacerbating their susceptibility to environmental disasters and ‎further perpetuating social and economic inequalities.‎

Despite enduring its toxicity, oil simultaneously serves as a source of sustenance and ‎security for those who rely on it (Valdivia, 2018). Valdivia examines the desires, ‎struggles, and commitments that shape the everyday life of Esmeraldas, which may seem ‎peripheral to the formal circulation of oil but are integral to the enactment of hydrocarbon ‎capital. ‎Through ethnographic research, Valdivia (2018) presents a broader perspective on ‎environmental justice that extends beyond contamination events and toxic exposures. ‎Valdivia (2020) focuses on the affective and intimate stories of workers and residents in ‎Esmeraldas, providing insights into the undertheorized aspects of oil flow operations. ‎This includes examining the emotional attachments workers develop towards the catalytic ‎units they have cared for over the years, their sense of obligation to keep operations ‎running despite political pressures to close the complex, and how other forces in their ‎lives occupy their political existence and diminish the potential for resistance.‎

The residents of Esmeraldas, who are often marginalized and targeted as objects of ‎improvement or sacrifices for capital accumulation, do not solely define their lives based ‎on victimhood. Their stories transcend the confines of toxicity, revealing their affective ‎connections with the petro-city—the place where they reside, love, and create families. ‎These narratives go beyond a politics of confusion, refusal, and recognition of harm ‎‎(Valdivia, 2018).‎

Gender is a problematic issue in environmental justice studies; it is very present, yet absent. Environmental justice is known for the engagement of women of color, which was out of sight before environmental justice took off in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet, gender and sexuality have taken a small space in environmental justice scholarship. In recent years, however, myriad efforts have been made to open new ways of thinking about environmental justice implications that include a wide range of intersectional identities, which are effectively concerned with gender and sexuality.  In this paper, reviewing environmental justice literature, I will offer the reasons for such neglect, alongside the efforts that have been made to attract environmental justice research to the issue of gender and sexuality. I suggest that environmental justice studies have myriad theoretical and methodological potentials to be a feminist line of research. 

Keywords: environmental justice, feminism, gender and sexuality, intersectionality, social reproduction, multiscalar

Introduction

Environmental destruction is a gender issue in many ways. Environmental degradation is often experienced more acutely by women (Voyles, 2018; Agarwal, 2019; Cutter, 1995; Karwacka et al., 2019; Braun & Traore, 2015; Kennedy et al. 2007; Krauss 1993; Woodruff, et al., 2011), while this experience is entwined with class and racial identities. Women are more likely than men to be subject to indoor air pollution, violence during and after natural disasters, and making food sacrifices when there is food shortage (Phillips 2009; Rees et al., 2005; Singh et al., 2013; Beaumier & Ford 2010 ). Yet, women are often the most excluded group to make environmental decisions that affect their lives so harshly (Buckingham and Kulcur, 2010; Houston & Kramarae, 1991; Nationen, 2010; Bell, 2016). On the other hand, environmental problems have reinforced gendered inequalities all around the world (Buckingham & Kulcur, 2010). Gendered aspects of ecology and environment are well developed in academic fields such as ecofeminism and feminist political ecology. Ecofeminists have theorized the same root of women’s oppression and nature’s oppression. They argue through certain historical and intellectual processes women’s values became undermined and instead devastating, hegemonic, and dominating masculinity has become the accepted set of values; the same attitude that creates a global climate disaster (Yeich, 1991). Feminist political ecology scholars, on the other hand, have embraced a historical-materialist argument and focus on gender as a social relation through which access to and distribution of natural resources is differentiated within societies and across genders. Such studies have documented how women are denied access to new technologies, training, and other benefits of development projects, and given limited access to and control over land and natural resources (Nightingale, 2006; Mollett & Faria, 2013; Rocheleau & Nirmal, 2015). Gender was also a focus for a few scholars from the earlier years of emerging environmental justice studies (e.g., Brown & Ferguson, 1995; Verchick, 1996). This is because the well-established studies about environmental and gender had documented several ways through which women experience and resist discriminatory environmental policies (Pellow, 2017).

Yet, many environmental justice scholars suggest that gender and sexuality remain a relatively marginal issue in environmental justice studies (Di Chiro, 2008; Epstein, 1997; Stein, 2004; Sze, 2006; Buckingham & Kulcur 2010; Mallory 2013; Kennedy & Dzialo, 2015; Pellow, 2016; Ducre, 2018, Bell, 2016; MacGregor, 2020). This is a dilemma. Environmental justice is a movement that women of color are most active in. Women's participation and leadership in environmental justice is so high that Verchick (1996) describes it as a feminist movement and Bell and Braun (2010) call it gendered activism. Despite this, gender issues have not been thoroughly incorporated into environmental justice scholarship. In this paper, I argue that despite this fact, environmental justice as a discipline has a deep capacity to be more gender-focused and feminist by taking a multi-scalar and intersectional approach. The revolutionary idea that is the core of environmental justice and contrasts with previous conceptions of nature that emphasized that the environment is not only nature, but it is a palace for living, working, and playing (Taylor, 2000), gives it the infinite capacity to be intersectional, multi-theoretical, and multi-scalar.

It is important to center gender and sexuality in environmental justice studies and practices because, through such scrutiny, new analytical perspectives and creative ways of intellectual engagement with environmental justice will open up and enable us to see a wider range of scalar and intersectional possible inquiries. Centering gender, moreover, provides a legal perspective to direct political efforts to an avenue to support radical social changes towards comprehensive environmental justice (Buckingham & Kulcur, 2010; Bell, 2016).

A Women’s Movement

Before the emergence of environmental justice movements in the 1960s-70s, environmental activism was a largely masculine and white sphere. Environmental justice movements introduced a paradigm shift whose most visibly different element was the participation of women, not white middle-class women, but working-class women of color. This was the subject of scrutiny for many scholars who tried to understand what motivated these women to fight for environmental justice (Krauss, 1993; Taylor, 2000; Bell & Braun, 2010; Perkins, 2012; Allen et al., 2019; Raimi et al., 2019).

One of the very common explanations is that women are simply pursuing traditional women’s interests, which is related to their mothering and caregiving characteristics and their need to protect their children, family, and community (Krasuss, 1993; Culley & Angelique, 2003; Bell & Braun, 2010; Garvey, 2011). In this sense, women have always been actively participating in all movements that are about the health and well-being of their children and community (e.g., campaign against drunk driving). Their activism was culturally expected as an “extension of traditionally feminine responsibilities” (Bell & Braun, 2010, p. 797). Female activists of these kinds of campaigns/movements usually describe their motivation to protect their family and social connections (Garvey, 2011). They see their position in the movement as an expansion of their parenting and nurturing role. However, assigning mothering and caregiving characteristics to biological women seems rather essentialist. Ironically, this assumption is one of the reasons for the paucity of theorizing about gender and sexuality in environmental justice studies. Because it was assumed that although environmental justice is deeply a women’s movement, its demand was not feminist.

Another problem with associating the struggle of women of color for environmental justice with their mothering quality is the danger of unwillingly depicting these women as politically unaware people who just came out of their homes for the first time with a political demand. Perkins (2012) shows that this is not the case, and a great percentage of women engaging in environmental justice movements were already politically active. Years earlier, Krauss (1993) argued that Black working-class women, unlike white working-class women, who became public only when they participated in an anti-toxic waste movement, were always public. They traditionally have played a central role in community activism and dealing with issues of race and economic injustice.

Another view states that female environmental justice activists see their identity as women integrated with their racial and class identities, with race often more of a place of empowerment for them than gender. This response is also flawed. Although women of color more than white women see themselves in the context of the race (Krauss, 1993), it is baseless to assume they do not recognize their gender-based subordination.

Gender imbalances in influential posts in institutions and organizations that shape environmental justice discourse are another reason to keep gendered environmental injustice invisible. Buckingham and Kulcur (2010) blame such gender blindness and masculinism on campaigning organizations and intellectual academies, which are still structured by gender, class, and race inequalities and continue to marginalize the study of gender inequalities within the field of environmental justice.

The more convincing reason for gender neglect in environmental justice studies and practice, perhaps, lies in the issue of geography and scale. For a long time, environmental justice studies predominantly were concerned with proximity analysis, meaning how a hazardous source is located close to a community of low-income and people of color. In other words, environmental justice studies traditionally look at the relationship between being a member of a marginalized population and being exposed to environmental harms or being deprived of environmental benefits. Women do not live in geographically concentrated spaces, as do ethnic minorities or people in poverty. Therefore, to women, the consequence of environmental injustice happens at a scale that is often invisible to environmental justice studies, which is the individual body and the household or family (Buckingham & Kulcur 2010).

Ignoring the matter of scale has been criticized by some environmental justice scholars (e.g., Towers, 2000; Kurtz, 2003; Walker, 2009; Pellow, 2017). Studies of the concept of “proximity” -meaning the socio‐spatial patterning of the locations of waste, landfill, and industrial sites and their proximity to populations of different racial make‐ups- for years have been central to identifying environmental injustice, therefore, preventing environmental justice scholarship from going beyond singular scale, place-based, and time-bound analyses. Walker (2009) argues that instead of simple spatial patterns and social injustice, we need to understand the spatiality of different forms and work at different spatial and temporal scales. Pellow (2017), too, challenges the environmental justice tendency to focus on a single scale, while environmental justice struggles function at multiple scales. Kurtz (2003) looks at the scalar ambiguity inherent in the political concept of environmental justice through a case study of a controversy over a proposed polyvinylchloride production facility in rural Convent, Louisiana. She shows the movement won only when it leveraged multiple understandings of scale to move beyond a NIMBY stance and frame itself as part of a broader pattern of untenable permitting practices in Louisiana. Pellow (2018) argues that scale is deeply racialized, gendered, and classed, and it can be either spatial or temporal.

A Feminist Movement

In contrast to the previous ideas, others argue that environmental justice is not only a women’s movement but also inherently a feminist movement for three reasons: first, what environmental justice movement challenges are in fact embedded in the patriarchal system; second, methods of environmental justice movements are inspired by and borrowed from feminist movements; and third, environmental justice, in theory, has the capacity to be well-linked to the feminist theories.

Environmental justice movements emerged from feminist questioning of the patriarchal system of value that manifested in environmental law (Verchick, 1996). It challenged distributional unfairness by unmasking biases in environmental protection that fail to take into account the experiences and values of environmentally threatened people, many of whom are women and people of color.  Moreover, strategies and goals of the environmental justice movement reflect feminist methods developed by women’s rights activists and feminist scholars, specifically in the 1960s and 1970s (Taylor, 2000). One of the feminist strategies employed by environmental justice movements was to unmask patriarchy, meaning to identify male biases by understanding women’s individual experiences. This approach questioned victim-blaming for inequalities, which was customary at the time (and still is), and instead pointed out social disparities as structural problems that need structural solutions. Environmental justice movements, therefore, framed environmental problems as

“The unjust outcomes in life circumstances [that] are attributed to pervasive and persistent societal racism rather than the victim’s imperfections” (Taylor, 2000, p. 514). 

Environmental justice activists used the feminist bottom-up perspective and contextual reasoning. Like feminists, they challenged grand narratives. One method of both environmental justice activists and feminist activists was to combine personal stories and empirical data to convince people that, for instance, there is a connection between discrimination and pollution or sexual harassment (in feminist struggles). Another feminist strategy that environmental justice activists borrowed was “consciousness-raising” through storytelling, media, books, visual arts, hearings, interviews, etc. (Verchick, 1996).

Because of its very subject and the methods employed in struggling and resistance, environmental justice connects clearly at a theoretical level to feminism. Ecofeminists are pioneers of linking gender and the environment. For ecofeminists, the question of nature and environment is shaped by gender, and understanding gender inequalities is important for a full analysis of environmental issues. The connection between ecofeminism and environmental justice can bridge across race and gender (Garvay 2011; Holifield et al., 2010; MacGregor, 2020). Environmental justice can be linked well with Black feminism, too. Ducre (2018) uses such connections to merge frames of race, gender, and ecology. Through this link, we can understand the construction of space in Black feminist epistemology and thus trace gendered and spatial dimensions of environmental racism and injustice. Ducre argues that Black women’s agency in environmentally degraded neighborhoods can be traced from ideologies found in Black feminism.

Intersectionality, a theoretical concept and analytical tool belonging to Black feminism, which theorizes the complex intersections among oppressed peoples along multiple axes of difference (Crenshaw 2017), would be a natural articulation between environmental justice and feminist theory. Perhaps we are at the prime historical moment to bring the feminist theory of intersectionality into environmental justice studies. It actually sounds impossible not to, when intersectionality now has become so mature and well-traveled to all social sciences, employed by scholars from linguistics to sociology. In fact, environmental justice has been concerned with intersectionality from its very origins. Until the 1970s in the USA, environmental activism was dominated by the white middle class, and the environmental justice movement emerged as a counter-paradigm and emphasized the integration of race and class and how these together form a unique experience of environmental harms. Thus, to take gender issues seriously in the framework of environmental justice, we already have the foundation of intersectionality. It is not, therefore, possible to consider gender without race and class, in a way that ecofeminists often do (Clement et al., 2019; Gaard, 2015), or to consider race as not central to gender/class arguments, as many feminist political ecology scholars do (Mollett & Faria, 2013). Environmental justice has already entangled class and race, yet, a more intersectional perspective helps to clarify that the issue of gender is not divorced from race/class nexus--and neither are other categories of social differences such as sexuality, citizenship, and nationality (Pellow 2017). Krauss (1993), without referring to the concept of intersectionality, which was very new at the time, compared three racial groups of working-class activist women in the anti-toxic movement. She argues that these women’s perspectives, analyses, and approaches to the government, despite sharing class and gender, are significantly divergent.

Scholars who think critically of environmental justice studies suggest an intersectional approach to investigate environmental injustice that identifies actors, organizations, and processes of power at multiple levels because environmental harms happen due to multiple sources of oppression (Sturgeon, 2009; Holifield et al., 2010; Buckingham and Kulcur 2010; Malin and Ryder, 2018; Pellow, 2017). Intersectionality must be employed in exploring the production, experience, and contestation of environmental injustice. It is not enough for any analysis to focus on a limited number of components of environmental injustice without an acknowledgment of wider structures of power and prejudice (Holifield et al., 2010). Pellow (2016), invites readers to consider multiple social categories of difference into environmental justice scholarship,  from race, gender, sexuality, ability, and class to species, since “multiple forms of inequality drive and characterize the experience of environmental injustice” (Pellow, 2017, p. 15). The intersectional approach is helpful to deepen the insights of environmental justice theory and thus to build more democratic, inclusive, and realistic solutions.

Another organic connection between feminist theory and environmental justice theory is the matter of scale. The issue of scale appears in its various connotations in feminist texts, from the bodily to global scale, and from spatial to temporal concepts of scale. Body, home, community, and the surrounding ecosystem are all identified as gendered environments in these texts. The bodily scale adds to our understanding of gender, race, nature, and culture. The scale of the body could also transform our understanding of the environment, nature, and land. Ecofeminists, specifically, have worked on the body as a discursive arena through which the hierarchical dichotomy that posits man/logic higher than woman/nature emerges. The “first environment” of the body (Sze, 2006) needs to be articulated much more explicitly as a site of environmental injustice (Buckingham & Kulcur, 2010).

Part of the gender and sexuality blindness of environmental justice studies is due to the invisibility of the scale at which environmental injustice affects women and LGBTQ people, while body and household are tied with various levels of decision-making, from state to business practice. For example, the female body has been “othered” as a variant of the “normal” male, and for this, chemicals and pharmaceuticals’ effects very often are neglected, as Sze (2006) suggested in the case of banning DES (diethylstilbestrol) by the US Federal Drug Administration. Sze observes that despite the women’s health movement against DES, what ultimately led it to be banned was its proven effect on men who had eaten DES-fed poultry. This sort of feminist critique has led to a re-definition of the environment to include “human bodies, especially in racialized communities, in cities, and through labor” (Sze, 2006, p. 792). Stain (2004) similarly calls for considering the body as an environment. She suggests  that

                     “When we view our bodies as ‘home’ as ‘lands’ and ‘homes’ and ‘environments’, that have been placed at risk, stolen from us, and even killed due to social and physical harms that maybe exacerbated due to our gender and sexuality, we may understand the need for new perspectives on environmental justice that encompass such factors within our analysis’ (Stain, 2004, p. 2).

 Considering the body as the environment would let us understand when marginalized groups of humans are rendered and treated as not fully human, this would be a matter of environmental justice because it threatens one’s health and life chances. A feminist scalar approach is a better recognition of the porosity of the boundary between the public and private realm, which has been assumed as “female space,” and of the micro-scales, particularly visible in the female body, which bears life and food (Buckingham & Kulcur, 2010). Pellow (2017) advocates for a critical environmental justice that views human bodies – particularly people of color, indigenous peoples, LGBTQ folk, women, immigrants, and working-class people – and bodies of land, water, and other animals as sites of environmental justice struggles. He refers to a strong quote from Chicana lesbian feminist scholar, Cherríe Moraga (1999), who writes,

“Land remains the common ground for all radical action. But land is more than rocks and trees. … For immigrants and natives alike, land is also the factories where we work, the water our children drink, and the housing project where we live. For women, lesbians, and gay men, land is that physical mass called our bodies” (p. 173).

On the other hand, focusing on the body must not lead environmental justice to another single-scalar analysis. Instead, environmental justice studies must take a multi-scalar approach. We must be able to think about how environmental injustice takes place at multiple scales, from the bodily scale to the global scale. This approach enables us to connect hazards in one place and harm in another place (Pellow, 2017). In the globalization era, there is no escape from the environmental consequences of bad decisions. For instance, even if the US dumps its toxic electronic waste in China, the chemical poisons will circle back through air and water and affect US citizens (Pellow, 2017).

Feminist political ecology, specifically, has shown that gendered access to land and other natural resources is relevant at all scales, not only at local scales and within the household (Nightingale, 2006). Gender relations and women’s right to land are reconfigured through development projects. For example, Karami and Rahmanian (2017) show how re-defining the concept of household and work through Land Distribution Reform in Iran in the 1960s, caused massive dispossession of women’s land. Based on the land reform law, reproductive work of women, although vital to the agriculture business, did not fall into the definition of “work”, and “household” was termed in a way that excluded women who owned land independently from their husbands. This massive dispossession led to the subjugation of women, and one of its consequences was to increase suicidal acts among women in the years to come (Karami & Rahmanian, 2017). These examples show how the micro-scale and macro-scale of land regimes are entangled.  In addition, it suggests an epistemological way of considering scale in the scholarship of environmental justice: by looking at the arena of social reproduction.

Social reproduction is “a range of activities, behaviors, responsibilities, and relationships that ensure the daily and generational social, emotional, moral, and physical reproduction of people” (Meehan & Strauss, 2015). Social reproduction is profoundly a spatial phenomenon that emerges as a spatially distinct set of social activities at the dawn of capitalism. Therefore, “It is not so much what women do that makes their work invisible, but where women do it” (Winders & Smith 2019, p. 872). The geography of social reproduction is more likely to be home. From the dawn of capitalism, home came to be a non-economic space of private life, where social reproduction takes place (Federici, 2012), whereas production activities that generate surplus value moved outside of the household, which assumed the public sphere. Social relations within the home (as a site for reproduction and recreation as well as, increasingly, paid work) are neglected in many environmental justice analyses (Buckingham and Kulcur, 2010).

Unpaid and low-paid domestic work performed mainly by women creates a distinct relationship with the environment. For example, homes, where paid and unpaid work of care and housework takes place, unlike other workplaces, remain unsupervised and potentially hazardous spaces (Buckingham & Kulcur, 2010). A domestic worker, to a much greater degree than a wage-earner worker, depends upon access to non-commodified and public goods -meaning nature- for subsistence. Moreover, the ideological construction of those identity groups assigned to domestic work -mainly women- is deeply linked to constructions of nature (Buckingham & Kulcur, 2010). Nevertheless, the environmental injustice that takes place within the home is often neglected.

Looking at home from a bodily scale reveals other aspects of environmental injustice that women must deal with. The site of domestic abuse, which studies show would happen at a greater rate in the situation of disaster or environmental degradation (Sety et al., 2014), is home. Evidence from all around the world shows how domestic violence increased dramatically during the recent pandemic lockdown (Das et al., 2020; Fawole et al., 2021; Lyons & Brewer, 2021; Piquero et al., 2021; Zhang, 2020). Domestic abuse includes a wide range of actions, from physical violence to food and medical deprivation. A locked door can be a form of domestic abuse. “Doors for women are often long-term, non-lethal weapons that leave no telltale bloody trail; doors don’t bear witness to a single, decisive blow” (Nixon 2011). For many women all around the world, home can easily turn into a temporary or permanent prison. If the body is a site of environmental injustice, then all forms of captivity are environmental injustices, since they harm the body (Pellow 2017).

Conclusion

Environmental justice studies are developing every day. More scholars critically assess the field and suggest ways to methodologically and theoretically improve the field. One of the most persistent criticisms of environmental justice studies is its paucity of attention to the issue of gender and sexuality. This is a surprise considering the high rate of participation of women in environmental justice movements and scholarship, but more importantly, the potential that the field has to be connected with feminist and queer theories. Myriad efforts have been made to overcome this fallacy. Perhaps one of the most important efforts is to take an intersectionality approach when analyzing environmental injustice. Borrowed from Black feminist theory, intersectionality in environmental justice suggests considering multiple sources of oppression that would create a distinctive experience of environmental injustice for different social groups.

Methodologically, one way to effectively take an intersectionality approach is by investigating the scale of the home, household, and body. Environmental justice scholars must be able to trace environmental injustice in areas that have not conventionally been considered as the environment, and only by taking such an approach can environmental justice become deeply and critically feminist. The seeds of this critical approach were cultivated in the early environmental justice studies, when challenging the conventional definition of the environment as nature, they insisted that the places of work and life are also the environment. Now, environmental justice scholars are taking it a step further, arguing that for women, LGBTQ+ folks, workers, and the poor, the body is also the environment.

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