Production and extrapolation of meaning in the environmental justice movement

We analyze the structural determinants of social construction processes in the environmental justice movement. We argue that initial structural conditions legitimated environmental grievances that were transformed in the 1980s into a sense of environmental injustice. Environmental injustice was produced through perceptions of: the Love Canal and Three Mile Island disasters; the Reagan administration's environmental deregulation; and continuing discoveries of contaminated communities. In the extrapolation of meaning, the grievance of environmental injustice evolved into the goal of environmental justice through interaction between grassroots environmental activists and national civil rights leaders.