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Refusing sustainability: Race and environmentalism in a changing Europe By ElanaResnick. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2025. 296 pp.

Year: 2025
Type: book-review
Abstract: The European Union is an ambitious political project that promotes values likely to resonate with most anthropologists: environmental protection, tolerance of social and cultural diversity, recognition of heritage, and openness to differing opinions.These represent only a handful of principles meant to promote good in the world.Yet given the heterogeneity of the European community, frictions necessarily emerge.One area of friction is sustainability, particularly in "Eastern Europe," which is still supposedly struggling with the burdens of its Soviet past.Although some critiques of this are legitimate, eastern worlds and how they operate remain misunderstood.While Eastern Europeans are frequently viewed as environmental troublemakers, their Romani inhabitants face an even greater challenge: they are largely excluded from images of sustainable futures.What are their "real" roles in fulfilling the ideal of sustainability?Elana Resnick's Refusing Sustainability is significant because it rectifies multiple misconceptions about sustainability in Europe and offers key insights into the processes and relations of waste management.Building on her ethnographic research in Bulgaria spanning two decades, Resnick paints a vivid picture of Romani lives intimately tied to waste streams.Her analysis focuses on three interrelated components: Roma, Bulgaria, and the EU.The main argument can be described as follows: the EU strives to promote sustainability and equality, but its policies cascade down in ways that reinforce racial hierarchy and generate disposable people.More importantly, Resnick demonstrates that the waste-management sector in Bulgaria relies on Romani labor, both formal and informal.In other words, progressive visions of sustainability fundamentally depend on those whose contributions go unrecognized and whose living conditions and respect within society worsen.To describe this, Resnick coins the term "racial sustainability."Resnick's rich ethnography vividly describes explicit anti-Roma racism, including stereotypes of laziness and animalistic sexuality.She shows how slow violence affects Roma through environmental harm; how Romani women refrain from protest-American Ethnologist.
DOI: 10.1111/amet.70041
Author: Daniel Sosna
Language: English
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4417512127
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