What are the possibilities for action and agency in a world of chronic, invisible environmental harm? How can environmental social movements address crises wherein affected communities have ambivalent or conflicting perceptions of the environmental harm in question? Through extensive participant observation and in-depth interviews, this study explores these questions in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear accident of March 2011. One way in which concerned citizens and advocates across the country responded to this accident was to organize recuperation retreats, meant to provide temporary relief from the physical threat of radiation exposure for children and families still living in Fukushima prefecture. Such retreats are primarily sites of relaxation, play, and immersion in nature. In providing "third places" for conversation about shared experiences, ongoing concerns, and practical information about radiation risk, retreats also function to de-normalize radiation contamination and cultivate ethical relations based on transparency, trust, and mutual support. I argue that recuperation retreat organizing, as well as the act of participation, represents a form of slow activism that falls outside of the binary of resistance and quiescence. Recuperation retreats present a potential model for a public health response to environmental health crises, particularly in cases of environmental uncertainty and contestation.
Environmental sociology, while dedicating significant scholarship to issues of environmental racism and environmental justice, remains a predominately white subdiscipline that has not enjoyed general relevance across sociology. One of the drivers of the dominance of white perspectives in the subdiscipline is the lack of a core theoretical pillar that anchors the importance of racism to structuring inequitable environments. W.E.B. Du Bois not only offered a foundational approach to sociological inquiry, but also a deeply material perspective on the maintenance of racial inequities. Du Bois's approach to sociology lays the path for a liberatory approach that documents the scope of a problem, interrogates its drivers, and works with affected communities and allied resources to develop alternative models with transformative outcomes. This paper argues that an environmental understanding was original to Du Bois's methodology as demonstrated through his concept of the total environment. He connected inequitable environments to the legacy of racial capitalism, which he saw as driven by anti-Blackness. His solution was to advance Black solidarity and community cooperatives through Pan-Africanism. Du Bois' framework establishes an approach to conducting emancipatory environmental sociology that provides theoretical and methodological legitimacy for engaging in partnership with marginalized communities to advance their goals towards liberation.
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