718 / Book Reviews

Lisa Schweitzer

JUSTICE, UNBOUND
From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Jus-
tice Movement by Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster. New York: New York Univer-
sity Press, 2001, 248 pp., $45.00 cloth, $18.00 paper.

Environmentalism Unbound: Exploring New Pathways for Change by Robert Got-

tlieb. Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press, 2001, 408 pp., $39.95 cloth, $19.95
paper.

Environmental Injustice in the United States: Myths and Realities, by the late James
P. Lester, David W. Allen, and Kelly M. Hill. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001, 216
pp., $27.00 paper.

Chronicles from the Environmental Justice Frontline, by J. Timmons Roberts and

Melissa M. Toffolon-Weiss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 279 pp.,
$23.95 paper.

Just as communities of color banded together in the 1960s and 1970s to dismantle
overtly racist policies like segregation, environmental justice activism in the past
20 years has challenged the distinction between environmentalism and social jus-
tice, which has led, the argument goes, to the unequal concentration of environ-
mental hazards in poor minority communities. Research on the distribution of
environmental hazards has come to dominate much of environmental policy and
theory.
Taken together, the four books reviewed here embody several themes in environ-
mental justice research. Foster and Cole and Roberts and Toffolon-Weiss study the
transformations within individuals and institutions during environmental con-
flicts. Lester, Allen, and Hill contribute to the growing body of research that estab-
lishes empirical evidence of disparate exposure to risk. Gottlieb’s volume repre-
sents yet a third area innovating greener and more socially just production. Each
book provides a different perspective on environmental policy in minority com-
munities.

RESEARCH ON COMMUNITIES AND TRANSFORMATION

Cole and Foster come from a legal perspective as participant-observers in case stud-
ies used to illustrate their theories about the failure of pluralist governance to over-
come racism. Kettlemen City, California, is the first case study offered to establish
that racist structures of government and capitalism foster unequal procedures and
outcomes. Similar conflicts in Chester, Pennsylvania, and Buttonwillow, California,
to discuss how informational asymmetries, local government capture, and differ-
ences in political power undermine both distributive and pluralistic justice. Relying
on critical race theory, they develop a deliberative model of governance based on
citizens’ advisory committees. Perhaps the most interesting chapters are the last, in
which Cole and Foster envision environmental justice activism as a means for rad-
icalizing individuals, communities, and institutions.
Roberts and Toffolon-Weiss, both sociologists, explore environmental racism
along Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.” These authors share Cole and Foster’s belief about
DOI: 10.1002/pam.10170
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the power of environmental activism to transform individuals and communities.

But for Roberts and Toffolon-Weiss, the transformations grow from the stress of
environmental organizing and the pain created when neighbors are pitted against
each other in political disputes. In an excellent discussion, they further show that
transformation works both ways. Just as community activism has blossomed in
response to environmental conflicts, so has industry transformed itself with savvier
lobbyists, stronger industry associations, and, ultimately, the ability to move pro-
duction to other, poorer countries.
The authors use the “growth machine” metaphor to explore how the petroleum
industry in Louisiana contributed to Cancer Alley—a concentration of toxic sites
running along Interstate 10. From this context, the authors ask what factors can
communities use to challenge the growth machine—the coalition between industry
and government—to prevent facility sitting or expansion.
This question is explored using four in-depth case studies from around Louisiana:
the LES Uranium Enrichment Facility in Homer, the famous Shintech case in the
St. James Parish, an Exxon facility outside Grand Bois, and the Agriculture Street
development in New Orleans. In their discussion, the authors pay particular atten-
tion to how governmental agencies are both stakeholder and arbiter in each envi-
ronmental conflict. In the Homer case, the residents blocked the LES facility, a vic-
tory that the authors ascribe primarily to the costly delays community residents
were able to impose. Similarly, the community with the U.S. Environmental Pro-
tection Agency (EPA) prevented Shintech from building near African American res-
idences. The company chose instead to locate near a neighboring poor white com-
munity—an outcome that the authors rightfully call a questionable victory. These
cases contrast with the Agriculture Street development, located on a former land-
fill, in which residents pursued a frustrating (and thus far fruitless) quest for com-
pensation and relocation. In these cases, communities were more likely to succeed
in thwarting construction than in rectifying damage.
Like Roberts and Toffolon-Weiss, Lester, Allen, and Hill are interested in the role
that government plays in environmental injustice. These authors argue that empir-
ical models of pollution exposure should reflect administrative jurisdiction. They
create empirical models for states, counties, and cities, arguing that these entities
have regulating authority. They contend that the multi-level analysis ensures a com-
monality of results among models that overcomes the imprecision of such large
spatial areas—a dubious justification, given that they treat their dependent vari-
ables as measures of pollution exposure.
Nonetheless, Lester, Allen, and Hill have made a significant contribution to the
empirical literature in environmental justice, because they include multiple models
for air pollution, water system violations, and surface water toxicity. Also, their
empirical models include both social and economic variables previously ignored in
the environmental justice research. They measure a jurisdiction’s pollution poten-
tial using a composite variable comprised of population, population density, the
number of manufacturing firms, and the manufacturing job density. Also included
are scale measures of governmental fiscal capacity and legislative professionalism,
as the authors theorize that governments with higher fiscal capacity and greater
professionalism have greater pollution control. A similar reasoning justifies includ-
ing the number of environmental groups.
The percentage of black population was significant in the models for all types of
pollution. Social class variables were significant at the city and county level for mul-
tiple models, and a conditional relationship was found between social class and the
percentage of Hispanics in two air pollution models. The rest of the control vari-
720 / Book Reviews

ables produced mixed results. This finding prompts the authors to conclude that
future empirical research on environmental justice should control for fiscal capac-
ity, land area, the prevalence of environmental interests, and the political structure
of local government. Given the aggregate nature of their dependent variables,
Lester, Allen, and Hill fortunately do not overstate what they can conclude based on
these models. Their work will be most interesting to other empirical researchers in
environmental justice.
In contrast, Gottlieb’s engaging account is suitable for undergraduates in envi-
ronmental policy. His case studies each highlight a different way in which commu-
nities can change production for the better. In the first case study, Gottlieb recounts
how Korean families in Los Angeles created a network of dry cleaners who, in
response to the Clean Air Act, sought alternatives to carbon tetrachloride and per-
cholorethylene. The case study traces how the Korean business community worked
together to diffuse wet-cleaning Eco-Clean technology throughout their social and
business networks. The second case study couples labor organizing with environ-
mental progress through the Justice for Janitors movement in Santa Monica. In an
effort to minimize chemical exposure at the workplace, janitors with the city of
Santa Monica worked with their employers to identify cleaner alternatives.
The last section of the book outlines Gottlieb’s recent work on community food
access for inner city and poor neighborhoods. A long though accessible critique of
modern agriculture and mass food production leads into a discussion on the con-
nections between bio-regionalism transportation, community gardens, and farmers’
markets for bringing better quality food to poor neighborhoods and schools.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS
Gottlieb’s policy approach is the most radical of the books reviewed here. In addi-
tion to his advocacy for community-based solutions, Gottlieb argues for changed
property rights founded on collective rather than individual benefit. Gottlieb con-
cludes that environmental justice for poor and minority communities hinges on
policies grounded in a respect for place-based identities and the ability of empow-
ered communities to identify and meet their own needs.
Experienced policy readers, however, will leave the book wishing for more depth
in both the analysis and the theory. Gottlieb ignores the thornier issues raised by
place-based policies or bio-regionalism. What does a place-based ethic mean for
those who are not attached to—and often unwelcome in—any place, like those who
are homeless? Similarly, Gottlieb criticizes industrial meat production, but he never
reconciles for the reader how—and more importantly, whether—meat production
can fit into an environmentally just food system.
Cole and Foster, after some scathing words about government, ultimately recom-
mend the creation of citizens’ advisory groups for hazards governance—hardly a
new idea. Cole and Foster at times reduce government and corporate actors to car-
icatures of duplicitous (or bumbling) bureaucrats and sinister capitalists, in one
case going so far as to make personal remarks about the “toadlike” appearance of
one local bureaucrat on the opposing side. They make unsubstantiated statements
about important events, such as asserting that the community they represented was
being lied to based on the authors’ unsubstantiated opinion about what a high-
ranking EPA official “must have known.” Given how Cole and Foster portray the
institutions involved in environmental conflicts, their citizens’ committees seem
doomed without structural reform.
 Book Reviews / 721

Roberts and Toffolon-Weiss do not make policy recommendations per se. But
they do suggest that decentralized local control over land use empowers local
elite groups over minority communities. They suggest that national policy atten-
tion is needed to overcome local government capture by the growth machine.
This conclusion, however, is not supported by the authors’ discussion tracing the
development of the EPA’s guidelines on environmental justice, or in the excep-
tions made for the petroleum industry in the Resource Conservation and Recov-
ery Act. In both instances, the federal government, arguably, became subject to
capture with more permanent and far-reaching consequences than for state or
local governments.
Lester, Allen, and Hill favor policy solutions based on technical risk assessment.
Their reliance on risk assessment ignores a persistent finding in environmental jus-
tice research that communities, when confronted with risk, mistrust government
and industry analysis. And with reason: risk assessment is not an exact science, and
experts can and do disagree on risk acceptability. Meanwhile, risk assessment may
seem merely a delaying tactic to community members who fear for their health. If
nothing else, the suggestion that risk assessment should determine policy amounts
to little more than an adherence to traditional rational planning.
Ultimately, all these books have something new to contribute to the research in
environmental justice. More than anything, perhaps, they show how far we are
from settling the major policy challenges raised by activists even as the body of
scholarly research on the subject grows.

Guidance from Randall Crane, Lois Takahashi, and Paul Ong helped the author develop the
ideas for this review.

LISA SCHWEITZER is a PhD candidate in the Department of Urban Planning at the

University of California–Los Angeles.

Marcus M. Stanley
The Job Training Charade by Gordon Lafer. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2002, 320 pp., $32.50 cloth.

America has one of the largest income gaps between rich and poor in the industri-
alized world, and this inequality has been growing. The pattern is clear enough even
to casual observers of American life, with its combination of sprawling suburban
mansions and downtown homelessness.
How you feel about this situation depends in part on your attitude toward labor
market regulation. Liberals who believe in state intervention to address poverty and
inequality can fault government policy. U.S. labor market institutions are among
the most laissez faire in the industrialized world. When one compares America with
major European countries or Canada, unions have far less influence here, the min-
imum wage is lower relative to the median wage, there are fewer government-man-
dated benefits, less public money is spent on income redistribution, and so on.
Numerous studies have reached the not very surprising conclusion that these pol-
icy choices have large effects on the income distribution (Freeman, 2000). Even
though the U.S. economy produces more wealth per capita than any other nation
on earth, low-paid workers in the United States earn less than similarly situated
workers in many European nations.

DOI: 10.1002/pam.10171