Toxic Entanglements Florida's Farmworkers and the Fight for Environmental Justice

Date of Award

2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Dean, Erin

Keywords

Farmworkers, Environmental Justice, Pesticides, Lake Apopka, Farmworker Association of Florida

Area of Concentration

Anthropology

Abstract

Environmental Justice is the pursuit of equitable treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, ethnicity, gender and income in questions of environmental regulation, management and public health. This thesis explores the environmental justice issue of pesticide exposure amongst Florida�s farmworkers, with an ethnographic and historical focus on the activism of the Farmworker Association of Florida and the former farmworker community of Lake Apopka�s muck farms. From the early 1940s to the late 1990s, not only did Lake Apopka�s farmworkers endure low wages, substandard living conditions, and exposure to a variety of hazardous pesticides, but were also excluded from policy decisions regarding the management of Lake Apopka�s polluted waters, resulting in the loss of nearly 2,500 farmworker jobs when the muck farms they worked on were bought out by the state of Florida for an environmental restoration project. Challenging the traditional apolitical narratives regarding pesticide use and environmental pollution, I argue for a closer look at how race, class and structural oppression influence environmental outcomes in the state of Florida.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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