Lucila Pulido
Biographic Data
| ID | 273277 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lucila Pulido |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lucila |
| FAMILY NAME | Pulido |
| SIGNATURE | PULIDO L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Southern California |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8450-8711 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1789 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1969 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Classics in human geography revisited: Laura Pulido’s “Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California” ( Annals of the Association of American Geographer…
Paving Over the Past: Oregon Historical Markers, White Innocence, and Manifest Destiny
Comparación de la violencia y agresiones sufridas por el personal de salud durante la pandemia de Covid-19 en Argentina y el resto de Latinoamérica
There was a high prevalence of violence against health personnel in Argentina during the COVID-19 pandemic. These events had a strong negative impact on those who suffered them. Our data suggest that violence against health personnel may have been more frequent in Argentina than in other regions of the continent
Cultural memory, white innocence, and United States territory: The 2022 Urban Geography Plenary Lecture
In this paper, I explore how hegemonic forms of cultural memory in the United States, specifically, National Historic Landmarks, represent white supremacy and colonization. National Historic Landmarks are a particular form of commemoration that, according to the National Park Service, “represent an outstanding aspect of American history and culture and embod[y] national significance.” We examined how such sites represent white supremacy and colon…
Unsettling Race, Nature, and Environment in Geography
What might it mean to “unsettle” our disciplinary understanding of race, nature, and the environment? In this introduction to the 2023 Special Issue of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers-focused on Race, Nature, and the Environment-we reflect on the meaning and practice of unsettling in a time of climate crisis, toxic legacies, uneven development, state violence, mass extinctions, carceral logics, and racial injustices that sha…
Erasing Empire: Remembering the Mexican-American War in Los Angeles
Geographies of Race and Ethnicity III: Settler Colonialism and Nonnative People of Color
In this essay I consider the politics of settler colonialism in relation to nonnative people of color. Settler colonialism has become an increasingly important concept over the past decade, and while geographers typically think about it from a white/native perspective, I explore how ethnic studies, specifically Chicanx studies, has responded to it. For different reasons both disciplines have hesitated to fully interrogate the significance of the …
Environmental Deregulation, Spectacular Racism, and White Nationalism in the Trump Era
Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles
Laura Pulido traces the roots of third world radicalism in Southern California during the 1960s and 1970s in this accessible, wonderfully illustrated comparative study. Focusing on the Black Panther Party, El Centro de Acción Social y Autonomo (CASA), and East Wind, a Japanese American collective, she explores how these African American, Chicana/o, and Japanese American groups sought to realize their ideas about race and class, gender relations, …
A People's Guide to Los Angeles
A People’s Guide to Los Angeles offers an assortment of eye-opening alternatives to L.A.’s usual tourist destinations. It documents 115 little-known sites in the City of Angels where struggles related to race, class, gender, and sexuality have occurred. They introduce us to people and events usually ignored by mainstream media and, in the process, create a fresh history of Los Angeles. Roughly dividing the city into six regions—North Los Angeles,…
Environmental Deregulation, Spectacular Racism, and White Nationalism in the Trump Era
This article examines the relationship between racism and environmental deregulation in President Trump’s first year in office. We collected data on all environmental events, such as executive actions at the federal level or Trump’s tweets. Likewise, we documented racist events targeting indigenous people, people of color, Muslims, and South Asians or Arabs. We found important differences in how these agendas unfolded: Environmental events were m…
Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad
Reimagining 'justice' in environmental justice: Radical ecologies, decolonial thought, and the Black Radical Tradition
In this article, we rethink the spatial and racial politics of the environmental justice movement in the United States by linking it to abolitionist theories that have emerged from the Black Radical Tradition, to critical theories of urban ecology, and to decolonial epistemologies rooted in the geopolitics of Las Americas. More specifically, we argue that environmental justice organizing among multi-racial groups is an extension of the Black Radi…
Environmental Racism
The concept of environmental racism emerged in the United States in the 1980s to refer to the socially uneven distribution of pollution and environmental resources along racial lines. The term “environmental justice” initially referred to the movement that arose to confront environmental racism, but has since expanded to encompass multiple forms of environmental inequities and problems. Environmental racism now refers to both a mobilizing framewo…
Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California
This chapter develops the concept of white privilege. It reviews how racism and space have been conceptualized in the literature and the geography of urban environmental racism. The chapter examines the historical processes and their racist underpinnings that have contributed to the environmental racism in Los Angeles. In any attempt to understand racism, scale is an important analytical tool in that it is both defined by racism and transcends it…
Historicizing the personal and the political
This chapter focuses on the author&s;s engagement with EJ scholarship as well as the literature&s;s minimal attention to racial formation. As the US transitioned from liberal multiculturalism to neoliberal multiculturalism, the moral authority of the CRM was replaced by explicitly racist discourses and projects, such as Black criminalization, the prison industrial complex, the war on drugs, and the criminalization of immigrants. The ballast of th…
Geographies of race and ethnicity III: Settler colonialism and nonnative people of color
In this third progress report I consider the politics of settler colonialism in relation to nonnative people of color. Settler colonialism has become an increasingly important concept over the past decade, and while geographers typically think about it from a white/native perspective, I explore how ethnic studies, specifically, Chicana/o studies, has responded to it. For different reasons both disciplines have hesitated to fully interrogate the s…
Conversations in Environmental Justice: Two Interviews
Environmental Justice research and activism focuses on the disproportionate risk to poor and communities of color from exposure to pollution and other environmental hazards. This includes the failu
Conversations in Environmental Justice: An Interview with David Pellow
Laura: Can you first tell me how you initially became interested in environmental issues?David: I grew up in Tennessee. My father would take us out to the wild, backpacking, hiking, swimming, and
Justice: An Epistolary Essay
This exchange of letters considers the relationship between geography and different formulations of justice. On one hand, social movements have made visible the particular geographies of racialized, gendered, and class-based injustice. For this reason, the discipline of geography can be useful for social justice activists making justice claims. On the other hand, the public and private institutions to which justice claims are addressed often trea…
Muddying the waters: Coauthoring feminisms across scholarship and activism
This book forum extends a discussion that Laura Pulido first organized around Richa Nagar’s Muddying the Waters: Coauthoring Feminisms Across Scholarship and Activism at the 2015 Annual Meeting of
Geographies of race and ethnicity II: Environmental racism, racial capitalism and state-sanctioned violence
In this report I argue that environmental racism is constituent of racial capitalism. While the environmental justice movement has been a success on many levels, there is compelling evidence that it has not succeeded in actually improving the environments of vulnerable communities. One reason for this is because we are not conceptualizing the problem correctly. I build my argument by first emphasizing the centrality of the production of social di…
State Regulation and Environmental Justice: The Need for Strategy Reassessment
In this paper, we explore how environmental justice activists’ reliance on state regulation has inhibited their ability to achieve their goals – an important topic whose oversight we do not believe
Flint, Environmental Racism, and Racial Capitalism
In this essay, I argue that the recent poisoning in Flint, Michigan, is a powerful example of both environmental racism and the everyday functioning of racial capitalism. As a journal devoted to le
Geographies of race and ethnicity 1: White supremacy vs white privilege in environmental racism research
In this report I compare two forms of racism: white privilege and white supremacy. I examine how they are distinct and can be seen in the environmental racism arena. I argue that within US geographic scholarship white privilege has become so widespread that more aggressive forms of racism, such as white supremacy, are often overlooked. It is essential that we understand the precise dynamics that produce environmental injustice so that we can accu…
Geographies of race and ethnicity II: Environmental racism, racial capitalism and state-sanctioned violence
In this report I argue that environmental racism is constituent of racial capitalism. While the environmental justice movement has been a success on many levels, there is compelling evidence that it has not succeeded in actually improving the environments of vulnerable communities. One reason for this is because we are not conceptualizing the problem correctly. I build my argument by first emphasizing the centrality of the production of social di…
Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California
Geographic studies of environmental racism have focused on the spatial relationships between environmental hazards and community demographics in order to determine if inequity exists. Conspicuously absent within this literature, however, is any substantive discussion of racism. This paper seeks to address this shortcoming in two ways. I first investigate how racism is understood and expressed in the literature. I argue that although racism is rar…
Flint, Environmental Racism, and Racial Capitalism
In this essay, I argue that the recent poisoning in Flint, Michigan, is a powerful example of both environmental racism and the everyday functioning of racial capitalism. As a journal devoted to le
Geographies of race and ethnicity 1: White supremacy vs white privilege in environmental racism research
In this report I compare two forms of racism: white privilege and white supremacy. I examine how they are distinct and can be seen in the environmental racism arena. I argue that within US geographic scholarship white privilege has become so widespread that more aggressive forms of racism, such as white supremacy, are often overlooked. It is essential that we understand the precise dynamics that produce environmental injustice so that we can accu…
Geographies of race and ethnicity III: Settler colonialism and nonnative people of color
In this third progress report I consider the politics of settler colonialism in relation to nonnative people of color. Settler colonialism has become an increasingly important concept over the past decade, and while geographers typically think about it from a white/native perspective, I explore how ethnic studies, specifically, Chicana/o studies, has responded to it. For different reasons both disciplines have hesitated to fully interrogate the s…
Accessing Assets: Immigrant Youth's Work as Family Translators or 'Para-Phrasers
Drawing on a mixed-method program of research including the survey responses of 236 Spanish-speaking children, as well as extensive interviews, participant observation, and audiotaped data gathered in four different communities, we unpack the ways in which bilingual youth use their knowledge of English and U.S. cultural/institutional practices to speak, listen, read, write, and do things for their immigrant parents, mostly from Mexico. We demonst…
State Regulation and Environmental Justice: The Need for Strategy Reassessment
In this paper, we explore how environmental justice activists’ reliance on state regulation has inhibited their ability to achieve their goals – an important topic whose oversight we do not believe
Reimagining 'justice' in environmental justice: Radical ecologies, decolonial thought, and the Black Radical Tradition
In this article, we rethink the spatial and racial politics of the environmental justice movement in the United States by linking it to abolitionist theories that have emerged from the Black Radical Tradition, to critical theories of urban ecology, and to decolonial epistemologies rooted in the geopolitics of Las Americas. More specifically, we argue that environmental justice organizing among multi-racial groups is an extension of the Black Radi…
An Archaeology of Environmental Racism in Los Angeles
This paper focuses on the historical evolution of discriminatory pollution patterns in Los Angeles. We argue that the historical processes leading to environmental racism cannot be understood without employing qualitative research methods. Moreover, in order to move beyond viewing “race” and class as mutually exclusive static categories, we conceptualize “race” and class as social relations. We first conducted a spatial analysis of air toxins in …
The Work of Performativity: Staging Social Justice at the University of Southern California
In this paper we offer an alternative reading of the role of performativity and everyday forms of resistance in current geographic literature. We make a case for thinking about performativity as a form of embodied dialectical praxis via a discussion of the ways in which performativity has been recently understood in geography. Turning to the tradition of Marxist revolutionary theater, we argue for the continued importance of thinking about the po…
Right to the Suburb? Rethinking Lefebvre and Immigrant Activism
In the face of increasing migration by Latinos to suburbs and multi-scalar policies criminalizing immigrants, municipalities are increasingly confronting the question, Who has the Right to the Suburb? We seek to better understand how the tensions between suburbanites and Latino immigrants are addressed by municipal governments as immigration enforcement is increasingly rescaled to the local level. Case studies of Maywood and Costa Mesa in Souther…
Muddying the waters: Coauthoring feminisms across scholarship and activism
This book forum extends a discussion that Laura Pulido first organized around Richa Nagar’s Muddying the Waters: Coauthoring Feminisms Across Scholarship and Activism at the 2015 Annual Meeting of
Geography, pedagogy and politics
This Forum takes seriously the proposition that everything we do as geographers is potentially `relevant' to the affairs of the wider society. Using expanded conceptions of `pedagogy' and `politics', the Forum suggests why and how we are always engaged in processes of shaping and steering this wider society, wittingly or not, and intentionally or not. In the minds of many of us, this shaping and steering only (or mostly) occurs through activities…
In the Long Shadow of the Settler: On Israeli and U.S. Colonialisms
This forum discusses the comparative dimensions of settler colonialism in Israel and the U.S.-Mexico border region, including separation walls, issues of migration, and the control of movement, dispossession, and settlement. The contributions take a variety of perspectives, both activist and scholarly. They engage with the longer historical perspective and with contemporary realities that suggest the comparability of the experience of Chicana/os …
Restructuring and the Contraction and Expansion of Environmental Rights in the United States
In this paper I examine the ways in which economic and political restructuring is impacting environmental rights as conceptualized and practised by environmental justice activists in California and the Southwestern USA. Using Iris Young's framework, I argue that the recent gains of the environmental justice movement have been based largely on procedural justice, which is insufficient to ensure universal environmental quality, a stated goal of the…
Race, Class, and Political Activism: Black, Chicana/o, and Japanese‐American Leftists in Southern California, 1968–1978
This paper explores the third‐world left in Los Angeles, from 1968–1978. In it I examine the political ideology and foci of one organization for each of the major racial/ethnic groups of the time: African Americans (Black Panther Party), Chicanas/os (El Centro de Accion Social y Autonomo [CASA]), and Japanese Americans (East Wind). In addition to reclaiming this relatively unknown history, I seek to explain the differences in the various organiza…
Environmental Deregulation, Spectacular Racism, and White Nationalism in the Trump Era
This article examines the relationship between racism and environmental deregulation in President Trump’s first year in office. We collected data on all environmental events, such as executive actions at the federal level or Trump’s tweets. Likewise, we documented racist events targeting indigenous people, people of color, Muslims, and South Asians or Arabs. We found important differences in how these agendas unfolded: Environmental events were m…
A Day Without Immigrants: The Racial and Class Politics of Immigrant Exclusion
Ecological legitimacy and cultural essentialism: Hispano grazing in the Southwest∗
Cultural memory, white innocence, and United States territory: The 2022 Urban Geography Plenary Lecture
In this paper, I explore how hegemonic forms of cultural memory in the United States, specifically, National Historic Landmarks, represent white supremacy and colonization. National Historic Landmarks are a particular form of commemoration that, according to the National Park Service, “represent an outstanding aspect of American history and culture and embod[y] national significance.” We examined how such sites represent white supremacy and colon…
The politics of gender in the Los Angeles bus riders' union/Sindicato de Pasajeros
Justice: An Epistolary Essay
This exchange of letters considers the relationship between geography and different formulations of justice. On one hand, social movements have made visible the particular geographies of racialized, gendered, and class-based injustice. For this reason, the discipline of geography can be useful for social justice activists making justice claims. On the other hand, the public and private institutions to which justice claims are addressed often trea…
Where in the World Is Juan-and What Color Is He: The Geography of Latina/o Racial Identity in Southern California
Recently there has been a robust discussion on the question of Latina/o racial subjectivity, particularly whether Latinas/os are more apt to identify as "white" or as people of color. Scholars focused on contemporary identification patterns have examined key variables, including age, education, income, and nativity in an effort to understand Latinas/os' racial choices. However, dimensions of time and space are frequently unanalyzed. Focusing on t…
Introduction: Environmental Racism
Conversations in Environmental Justice: An Interview with David Pellow
Laura: Can you first tell me how you initially became interested in environmental issues?David: I grew up in Tennessee. My father would take us out to the wild, backpacking, hiking, swimming, and
Radicalising Teaching and Tourism: A People's Guide as Active and Activist History
Left History features articles from a variety of theoretical approaches; these include feminist, marxist, and postmodernist deliberations on topics such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, culture, the state, labour, the environment, theory, and method
Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World
Radical Ecology responds to the profound awareness of vironmental crisis which prevails in this closing decade of the twentieth century. Carolyn Merchant examines the major philosophical, ethical, scientific and economic roots of environmental problems and identifies the ways in which radical ecologists can transform science and society in order to sustain life. Laws, regulations and scientific research alone cannot reverse the spread of pollutio…
Restructuring and the Contraction and Expansion of Environmental Rights in the United States
In this paper I examine the ways in which economic and political restructuring is impacting environmental rights as conceptualized and practised by environmental justice activists in California and the Southwestern USA. Using Iris Young's framework, I argue that the recent gains of the environmental justice movement have been based largely on procedural justice, which is insufficient to ensure universal environmental quality, a stated goal of the…
Environmentalism and Economic Justice: Two Chicano Struggles in the Southwest
A Critical Review of the Methodology of Environmental Racism Research
Research on environmental racism has emphasized positive rationality. While useful for policy and legal interventions, this is problematic from a radical political and theoretical viewpoint. By examining two key research questions–is “race” or class responsible for discriminatory patterns? which came first, the people or the hazard?–I explore the implicit assumptions concerning racism within this framework. This reveals a large, pervasive set of …
Introduction: Environmental Racism
An Archaeology of Environmental Racism in Los Angeles
This paper focuses on the historical evolution of discriminatory pollution patterns in Los Angeles. We argue that the historical processes leading to environmental racism cannot be understood without employing qualitative research methods. Moreover, in order to move beyond viewing “race” and class as mutually exclusive static categories, we conceptualize “race” and class as social relations. We first conducted a spatial analysis of air toxins in …
Ecopopulism: Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environmental Justice
Ecological legitimacy and cultural essentialism: Hispano grazing in the Southwest∗
The Sacredness of “Mother Earth”: Spirituality, Activism, and Social Justice
The politics of gender in the Los Angeles bus riders' union/Sindicato de Pasajeros
Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California
Geographic studies of environmental racism have focused on the spatial relationships between environmental hazards and community demographics in order to determine if inequity exists. Conspicuously absent within this literature, however, is any substantive discussion of racism. This paper seeks to address this shortcoming in two ways. I first investigate how racism is understood and expressed in the literature. I argue that although racism is rar…
Reflections on a White Discipline
Utilizing a partially autobiographical format, this article considers the practice and study of race within geography. I argue that the overwhelmingly white composition of the discipline has very real implications for both individual experiences and our intellectual production and disciplinary culture. I explore these issues by drawing on my own experiences as a Chicana within geography, and by examining the extent to which one area of research, …
Race, Class, and Political Activism: Black, Chicana/o, and Japanese‐American Leftists in Southern California, 1968–1978
This paper explores the third‐world left in Los Angeles, from 1968–1978. In it I examine the political ideology and foci of one organization for each of the major racial/ethnic groups of the time: African Americans (Black Panther Party), Chicanas/os (El Centro de Accion Social y Autonomo [CASA]), and Japanese Americans (East Wind). In addition to reclaiming this relatively unknown history, I seek to explain the differences in the various organiza…
The Work of Performativity: Staging Social Justice at the University of Southern California
In this paper we offer an alternative reading of the role of performativity and everyday forms of resistance in current geographic literature. We make a case for thinking about performativity as a form of embodied dialectical praxis via a discussion of the ways in which performativity has been recently understood in geography. Turning to the tradition of Marxist revolutionary theater, we argue for the continued importance of thinking about the po…
Accessing Assets: Immigrant Youth's Work as Family Translators or 'Para-Phrasers
Drawing on a mixed-method program of research including the survey responses of 236 Spanish-speaking children, as well as extensive interviews, participant observation, and audiotaped data gathered in four different communities, we unpack the ways in which bilingual youth use their knowledge of English and U.S. cultural/institutional practices to speak, listen, read, write, and do things for their immigrant parents, mostly from Mexico. We demonst…
Race, Immigration and the Border
The After School Routines of Literature-Devoted Urban Children
This paper discusses the out of school routines of a group of ‘literature-devoted’ children of the city of Madrid (Spain). The children and families were recruited for the study at a library, a children’s bookstore and a puppet show in a park. Participants provided information on their weekly routines through several procedures: surveys, photographs of their daily lives, interviews based on the photographs and interviews with parents. We develop …
A Day Without Immigrants: The Racial and Class Politics of Immigrant Exclusion
Black, Brown, Yellow and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles
Race, Class, and Activism 1. Race and Political Activism 2. Differential Racialization in Southern California 3. The Politicization of the Third World Left Part II. The Third World Left 4. Serving the People and Vanguard Politics: The Formation of the Third World Left in Los Angeles 5. Ideologies of Nation, Class, and Race in the Third World Left 6. The Politics of Solidarity: Interethnic Relations in the Third World Left 7. Patriarchy and Revolu…
Geography, pedagogy and politics
This Forum takes seriously the proposition that everything we do as geographers is potentially `relevant' to the affairs of the wider society. Using expanded conceptions of `pedagogy' and `politics', the Forum suggests why and how we are always engaged in processes of shaping and steering this wider society, wittingly or not, and intentionally or not. In the minds of many of us, this shaping and steering only (or mostly) occurs through activities…
Immigration Politics and Motherhood
Although anti-immigrant sentiment is a constant across the U.S. political landscape, it ebbs and flows with larger political and economic shifts. The current wave began in the 1990s, was energized by 9-11, and has now reached epic proportions. While 9-11 was a major tragedy in its own right, it also spawned a whole series of secondary tragedies for racially-subordinated immigrant groups, including Muslims, Arabs, Asians and Latinas/os. The violat…
In the Long Shadow of the Settler: On Israeli and U.S. Colonialisms
This forum discusses the comparative dimensions of settler colonialism in Israel and the U.S.-Mexico border region, including separation walls, issues of migration, and the control of movement, dispossession, and settlement. The contributions take a variety of perspectives, both activist and scholarly. They engage with the longer historical perspective and with contemporary realities that suggest the comparability of the experience of Chicana/os …
From La Frontera to Gaza: Chicano-Palestinian Connections
From La Frontera to Gaza: Chicano-Palestinian Connections Laura Pulido (bio) and David Lloyd (bio) This American Quarterly forum on Palestine and the U.S. Southwest grew out of a symposium held at the University of Southern California on March 30, 2009, to mark Cesar Chavez Day. March 31 marks Cesar Chavez Day in eight states in the United States. The holiday was adopted in California in 2000 and is intended not only to commemorate the labor lead…
Multimodalidad y participación de la infancia sorda en contextos de socialización literaria informales
En este artículo realizamos un análisis del discurso y la interacción multimodal de una sesión de cuentacuentos realizada en una biblioteca en la que el narrador está acompañado por una intérprete de lengua de signos española (LSE). El caso forma parte de una investigación más amplia que examina sesiones de cuentacuentos en bibliotecas, librerías infantiles y parques como espacios de socialización literaria en contextos de aprendizaje informal. A…
Political science (45 works) · Law (41 works) · Sociology (41 works) · Politics (30 works) · Gender Studies (27 works) · Law (26 works) · Environmental Justice and Health Disparities (23 works) · Environmental ethics (19 works) · Environmental justice (16 works) · Gender Studies (15 works)