ABSTRACT

Seeking Justice in an Energy Sacrifice Zone is an ethnography of the lived experience of rapid environmental change in coastal Louisiana, USA. Writing from a political ecology perspective, Maldonado explores the effects of changes to localized climate and ecology on the Isle de Jean Charles, Grand Caillou/Dulac, and Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribes. Focusing in particular on wide-ranging displacement effects, she argues that changes to climate and ecology should not be viewed in isolation as only physical processes but as part of wider socio-political and historical contexts. The book is valuable reading for students and scholars in the fields of anthropology, sociology, geography, environmental studies and disaster studies as well as public policy and planning.

chapter |5 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|8 pages

A Climate of Change

chapter 2|10 pages

Entrée into Coastal Louisiana

Seeing the Unexpected

chapter 3|33 pages

Co-occurring and Accumulating Disasters

chapter 4|23 pages

A Legacy of Atrocities

Establishing an Energy Sacrifice Zone

chapter 5|16 pages

Corexit to Forget It

The BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster

chapter 6|12 pages

Adaptation and Resistance

chapter 7|20 pages

Community Resettlement

Obstacles, Challenges, and Opportunities

chapter 8|11 pages

A Call to Action

“We Have Got to Slow the Rising Tide”

chapter |7 pages

Conclusion