New book on environmental justice edited by UWM scholar

Ryan Holifield, associate professor of geography at UWM, is the lead editor of the recently published “Routledge Handbook of Environmental Justice,” a collection of 50 original articles contributed by over 90 leading scholars.

The volume serves as both an introduction to students of environmental justice issues and a compendium of methods and topics for established scholars looking to familiarize themselves with new aspects of a field that encompasses a wide variety of topics, disciplines and methods.

Ryan Holifield

Holifield’s co-editors were Jayajit Chakraborty, professor of geography in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and director of the Socio-Environmental and Geospatial Analysis Lab at the University of Texas at El Paso; and Gordon Walker, professor of environment, risk, and justice in the Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, U.K.

“Environmental justice encompasses a broad range of topics,” Holifield says, “but the core ideas are that environmental costs and benefits are not distributed equally, they affect groups in different ways, not everyone has the same access to environmental decision-making, not all differences are fully recognized.”

The handbook is organized into four main sections: theoretical dimensions of environmental justice, methods, substantive issues, and global and regional dimensions.

While the book will be found primarily in academic libraries, an electronic version is also planned.

Holifield has also recently contributed to two other handbooks: “The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology, “and the forthcoming “Routledge Handbook on Spaces of Urban Politics.”

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