Pathways to climate equity and environmental justice traverse energy industry worksites. This seminar examines how the racial ideology of elites guides management decisions in worksites rife with labor and environmental hazards. Using the Brazilian sugar-ethanol industry as a case study, the talk illustrates how white industry elites utilize racial and non-racial discursive frames to rationalize the exposure of non-white workers to harmful practices. In focusing on worksites involved with renewable fuels production, this seminar interrogates how elite racial ideologies shape and limit progress toward climate equity and environmental justice.
Ian Carrillo is a 2019-2020 NSF SBE Postdoctoral Research Fellow, affiliated with the Departments of Environmental Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Departments of Sociology and Community & Environmental Sociology. He has published and has forthcoming research in Agriculture and Human Values, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Current Sociology, Environmental Sociology, Handbook of Anti-Environmentalism, and Latin American Perspectives. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Engines of Inequality: Regulating Race, Labor, and Environment in Brazil.