Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2011

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Introduction

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapter 7-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Key Figures

Rob Nixon (Author)

Rob Nixon began his career as an activist and writer working to dismantle apartheid. In the Preface, Nixon notes that he was heavily influenced by Edward Said as a graduate student at Columbia University in the mid-1980s. While conducting his graduate work, Nixon found himself “confronted with two unappetizing options: to follow either the fusty old formalists, with their patched-tweed Ivy League belle-lettrism, or the hipper new formalists, whose lemming run toward the palisades of deconstruction was then in full spate” (xi). Nixon, who immigrated to the US, was deeply passionate about literature and politics. Said offered him a third path where he could combine both of these passions and still reach various audiences.

Nixon holds a PhD from Columbia University. He is currently the Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Family Professor in the Humanities and the Environment at Princeton University, but he has held academic positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Nixon has authored four books, including the award-winning Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Nixon himself has also received numerous accolades, including the MacArthur Foundation Peace and Security Fellowship and the Fulbright-Hays Fellowship. Like many of the writers highlighted in the book, Nixon has published in the fields of environmental and postcolonial studies. He also writes in various literary forms.

Rachel Carson

Considered one of the greatest nature writers of the 20th century, Rachel Carson (1907-1964) was an American writer, conservationist, and marine biologist. She began her career with the US Bureau of Fisheries as an aquatic biologist and did not become a full-time writer until the 1950s. She wrote 24 books, including two best-selling books about the ocean.

Her most popular book, Silent Spring (1962), details her concerns around chemical pesticides. Silent Spring was the first book to expose the harm that pesticides, especially DDT, caused to all forms of life. Chemical companies fiercely opposed the conclusions in the book. Despite this resistance, Silent Spring launched a grassroots environmental movement that resulted in a nationwide ban on DDT and other synthetic pesticides and the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). President Jimmy Carter awarded Carson, who died after a long battle with breast cancer, the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously.

Nixon notes that Carson is one of three individuals who served as a source of inspiration for Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Carson was skeptical of experts, especially those within the US military complex, who she believed covered up the deadly harms caused by chemical pesticides. She alConsidered one of the greatest nature writers of the 20th century, Rachel Carson (1907-1964) was an American writer, conservationist, and marine biologist. She began her career with the US Bureau of Fisheries as an aquatic biologist and did not become a full-time writer until the 1950s. She wrote 24 books, including two best-selling books about the ocean.

Carson was one of the first writers to demonstrate to the public the impacts of environmental time, specifically the long-term adverse effects that chemical pesticides had on the health of the ecosystem. At a time when Americans had plenty of short-term political, economic, and social challenges to fear, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War, Carson showed how the long-term effects of chemicals could lead to even worse catastrophes. Her writings “helped hasten the shift from a conservationist ideology to the more socioenvironmental outlook that has proven so enabling for environmental justice movements” (xi).so mistrusted academics who wrote only for other academics. Carson intentionally made sure that her writings were accessible to the public.

Ramachandra Guha

Ramachandra Guha (1958- ) is an Indian sociologist, writer, public intellectual, and environmentalist. Although most of his career has been outside of academia, he has held positions at Yale, Stanford, the University of Oslo, the University of California at Berkeley, and the London School of Economics. He has written books on a diverse range of topics, including a pioneering history of the environment, a history of cricket, and the history and culture of India. He also contributes to numerous newspaper columns, including one that is translated into six different languages and has a readership of 20 million.

Nixon lists Guha as one of three individuals who inspired him. Through his writings, Guha underscores:

[T]he need to keep environmentalism connected to global questions of distributive justice, connected as well to the unequal burdens of consumption and militarization imposed on our finite planet by the world’s rich and poor, in their capacity as individuals and as nation-states. (xii)

Guha was one of the first to emphasize that environmental advocacy is done by people around the planet and not just individuals in Western societies. Alongside several collaborators, he coined key terms that Nixon uses throughout Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (e.g., environmentalism of the poor).

Edward Said

Edward Said (1935-2003) was a Palestinian-American public intellectual, opera critic, politician, television celebrity, pianist, media expert, and professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. He used a broad literary approach in his writings, which makes his style difficult to categorize. Said is best known for his book Orientalism (1978), which critiqued Western study of Middle Eastern cultures. He argued that there was a long tradition in the West of romanticizing the Middle East. To Said, European and American powers used these false narratives to justify their colonial and imperial ambitions in this region. He also denounced many leaders of Middle Eastern countries who he felt profited from these narratives and acted against the interests of their people.

Orientalism became one of the founding texts of postcolonial studies in the academy. This book enabled many scholars in non-Western countries to have a voice in academic writings. Said was also one of the greatest advocates of the Palestinian cause in the United States. His advocacy combined with his criticism of political leaders in the Middle East earned him numerous enemies.

Nixon cites Said as one of three individuals who influenced his writing of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Said was deeply critical of scholarly writing, which he found too stuffy. While Said was not environmentally minded, he yearned for a future when there would be “alternative communities all across the world, informed by alternative information, and keenly aware of the environmental, human rights, and libertarian impulses that bind us together in this tiny planet” (x). Said used “archive-driven scholarship” and broad literary styles to reach vast audiences.