UC Santa Barbara

The term critical environmental justice (EJ) studies was perhaps first used in the early 2000s and has been become more mainstream in the last two years. R. Scott Frey’s research on the transnational trade in hazardous substances reveals that he was producing critical EJ studies scholarship well before that. Frey’s body of work has advanced the fields of world-systems theory and environmental sociology because it skillfully explores the violence of militarism and the brutality of capitalism and economic globalization, while also making clear that positive and transformative social change is possible when independent, grassroots movements mobilize within and across international borders. Frey’s research provide us with an impressive set of analytical tools for imagining and bringing into existence another world that would be more socially just and environmentally sustainable.