New Allies for Nature and Culture: Exploring Common Ground for a Just and Sustainable Chicago Region

Environmental Justice

Volumn 1, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 189-194

  Hirsch, Jennifer L ^a  

^a FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 70349532384     PISSN: 19394071     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1089/env.2008.0522     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. For example, see the United Nations' 2007–08 Human Development Report, “Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World,” -08
2. which states: “we must see the fight against poverty and the fight against the effects of climate change as interrelated efforts.” (Last accessed on July 16, 2008).
3. See Smart Growth Online Sprawl Watch Clearinghouse, “Green Infrastructure: Smart Conservation for the 21st Century,” (Last accessed on July 16, 2008);
4. Heritage Conservancy, “Growing with Green Infrastructure: Preserving our Natural and Historic Heritage,” (Last accessed on July 16, 2008);
5. Conversation on Regional Equity (CORE), “Edging Toward Equity: Creating Shared Opportunity in America's Regions,” (Last accessed on July 16, 2008);
6. Julian Agyeman. Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice. (NYU Press, 2005). 44.
7. Manuel Pastor, Jr., “Regionalist Risks, Community Opportunities,” Urban Habitat (Spring 2000, “Perspectives on Regionalism”).
8. Julian Agyeman, “Alternatives for Community and Environment: Where Justice and Sustainability Meet,” Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, Vol. 47, No. 6 (2005): 11–23.
9. Academic Search Premier Database. EBSCOhost (Last accessed on July 16, 2008);
10. Julian Agyeman, Robert Bullard, and Bob Evans (eds.). Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World' (MIT Press, 2003).
11. Similarly, in “Living Environmentalisms: Coalition Politics, Social Reproduction, and Environmental Justice,”
12. Giovanna Di Chiro argues in favor of a “politics of articulation,” which she defines as “the linking of diverse movements, common ideas, and situated knowledges in the hopes of surviving together.” Environmental Politics, 17:2 (2008): 280.
13. Informaworld Journals (Last accessed on July 16, 2008).
14. Other examples of articles addressing intersections between social justice and environment/sustainability include: Robert Kleidman, “Community Organizing and Regionalism,” City & Community, Vol. 3, No. 4 (December 2004): 403–421.
15. Synergy Blackwell Premium (Last accessed on July 17, 2008);
16. Joel Rast, “Environmental Justice and the New Regionalism,” Journal of Planning Education and Research, 25 (2006): 249–263.
17. Sage Premier 2007 (Last accessed on July 17, 2008).
18. Agyeman, “Alternatives for Community and Environment,” 11.
19. Julian Agyeman and Tom Evans, “Towards Just Sustainability in Urban Communities: Building Equity Rights with Sustainable Solutions,” Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 590 (2003): 35–53.
20. SAGE JOURNALS Online (Last accessed on July 16, 2008).
21. The word “culture” is used here in the anthropological sense to refer to the practices and values that comprise everyday life. For this project, it is shorthand for sociocultural issues
22. New Allies for Nature and Culture was sponsored by Boeing and Grand Victoria Foundation.
23. See (Last accessed on July 16, 2008). The Field Museum has partnered with the Civic Knowledge Project to use their listhost, web site, and blog for ongoing communication among New Allies participants.
24. David Harvey, “Class Relations, Social Justice and the Politics of Difference.” In Michael Keith and Steve Pile (eds.). Place and the Politics of Identity. (Routledge, 1993). 41–66.
25. Agyeman and Evans, “Towards Just Sustainability in Urban Communities,” 41. Our research results may have differed from Agyeman and Evans' in part because they focused more narrowly on environmental justice and sustainability organizations, whereas New Allies looked broadly at organizations working on environmental issues and social issues. In addition we included only a limited number of traditional EJ organizations in our research.
26. (Last accessed on July 16, 2008). Bethel New Life is referenced in Agyeman, “Alternatives for Community and Environment,” 23 and Manuel Pastor, Jr. This Could Be the Start of Something Big: Regional Equity Organizing and the Future of Metropolitan America (forthcoming). 10–11.
27. Manuel Pastor, Jr., Keynote Presentation at the New Allies for Nature and Culture Gathering, June 19, 2008, The Field Museum, Chicago, Illinois.
28. Steven McCullough, interview with author, August 8, 2007, Chicago, Illinois (notes in possession of the author).
29. Marjorie Hess, interview with author, November 30, 2007, Chicago, Illinois (notes in possession of the author).
30. Reginald Jones, interview with author, August 8, 2007, Chicago, Illinois (notes in possession of the author).
31. Kimberly Wasserman Nieto, interview with Heather Stratton, August 3, 2007, Chicago, Illinois (transcript in possession of the author).
32. Doug Medin and Sarah Unsworth, interview with Josh Ostergaard, July 16, 2007, Chicago, Illinois (notes in possession of the author).
33. Rolando Madrid and Lety Almanza, interview with Josh Ostergaard and Paty Perea, July 30, 2007, Chicago, Illinois (notes in possession of the author).
34. Naomi Davis and Martha Boyd, interview with author, December 14, 2007, Chicago, Illinois (notes in possession of the author). See also (Last accessed on July 18, 2008).
35. Timothy Ready and Allert Brown-Gort, The State of Latino Chicago: This is Home Now (Institute for Latino Studies, University of Notre Dame, 2005).
36. Sylvia Hood Washington, Packing Them In: An Archaeology of Environmental Racism in Chicago, 1865–1954 (Lexington Books, 2005). 160.
37. Joan Martinez-Alier, “Environmental Justice, Sustainability and Valuation,” Harvard Seminar on Environmental Values, March 21, 2000, (Last accessed on July 16, 2008).
38. Scholar-activist Michel Gelobter and colleagues lay out some of the key ways in which the EJM and sustainability movements in the U.S. have re-framed environmental issues, in “The Soul of Environmentalism,” (Last accessed on July 18, 2008).
39. Pastor, “Regionalist Risks, Community Opportunities.”
40. “A Community Solutions Salon with Van Jones and Green for All,” DuSable Museum of African American History, June 25, 2008,
41. Chicago, Illinois. Scholar-activist Michel Gelobter et al make a similar point in “The Soul of Environmentalism,” arguing that to achieve deep-rooted change, today's movements need to focus on the concepts of community and interdependence. (Last accessed on July 18, 2008).
42. José López, interview with Heather Stratton, July 28, 2007, Chicago, Illinois (transcript in possession of the author).
43. The Principles of Environmental Justice (EJ), (Last accessed on July 16, 2008).
44. Laura Pulido, “The Sacredness of ‘Mother Earth’: Spirituality, Activism, and Social Justice,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Dec. 1998): 720.
45. JSTOR (Last accessed on April 7, 2008).
46. Colin C. Williams and Andrew C. Millington, “The Diverse and Contested Meanings of Sustainable Development,” The Geographical Journal, Vol. 170, No. 2 (June 2004): 101.
47. Academic Search Premier Database. EBSCOhost (Last accessed on July 16, 2008).
48. Quoted in Joyce A. Baugh, “African-Americans and the Environment: A Review Essay,” Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Spring 1991): 191.
49. Academic Search Premier Database. EBSCOhost (Last accessed on July 16, 2008).
50. For an interesting anthropological perspective on creating new, sustainable systems of exchange, see Alf Hornborg, “Learning from the Tiv: Why a Sustainable Economy Would Have to Be ‘Multicentric,’” Culture & Agriculture, Vol. 29, No. 2 (2007): 63–69.
51. Anthrosource. (Last accessed July 17, 2008).