From rationalized exploitation to supra sacrifice zones: Tracing sacrifice zones as a keyword of environmental sociology

This article asks how the term sacrifice zones has reflected and enabled changing concerns of environmentalism from 1970 to today. Through the historical genealogy of a concept deployed in academia, popular media, and activism, we trace how, when, and in what contexts the concept sacrifice zone has been used. Tracing four discursive turns, each focused on an alternative interpretation of the disposability of certain people and their environments, this project offers a generative window into the interplay between keywords of environmental justice and on-the-ground meaning making. First used in a US government report rationalizing the expendability of territories for large-scale natural resource extraction in response to the energy crisis, the term was quickly adopted by activists, policymakers, and residents to problematize the socioeconomic and political logics driving the uneven siting of nuclear waste near Native American reservations and the inequitable depositing of pollutants in fence-line communities. More recently, the term has been expanded to include labor exploitation and climate change, leading us to conceptualize supra sacrifice zones-spaces in which intersectional categories of sacrifice are layered and compounded in one location or community over time. By studying how this core environmental justice concept travels and is embedded in our globalized social structures, this article shows how keywords shape social life.