Understanding American Power:Conceptual clarity, strategic priorities and the decline debate

What does it mean for the United States to be powerful? The prospect of a decline in American power, especially relative to a rising China, has attracted considerable scholarly and political attention. Despite a wealth of data, disagreements persist regarding both the likely trajectory of the US-China balance and the most effective strategy for preserving America’s advantage into the future. This article locates the source of these enduring disputes in fundamental conceptual differences over the meaning of power itself. We map the distinct tracks of argument within the decline debate, showing that competing positions are often rooted in differences of focus rather than disputes over fact. Most fundamental is a divide between analyses dedicated to national capabilities, and others that emphasise mechanisms of relational power. This divide underpins how strategists think about the goal of preserving or extending American power. We therefore construct a typology of competing understandings of what it means for America to be powerful, to show that a strategy suited to bolstering American power according to one definition of that goal may not support, and may even undermine, American power understood in other ways

Accumulated injuries of environmental injustice : living and working with petrochemical pollution in Nanjing, China

This article examines perceptions of living and working with toxic pollution in two periurban petrochemical areas in Nanjing, China, a heavily polluted megacity on the Yangtze River. Despite the concentrated geography of the petrochemical industry in Nanjing, protests over pollution have been small scale and highly localized, paralleling dynamics in many “cancer villages” of rural China. This contrasts with high-profile anti-PX (paraxylene) protests that have happened in Xiamen, Dalian, and other cities in China over the past decade. This article draws on twenty-five semistructured interviews and participant observation with workers and residents in both petrochemical areas. We extend the idea of the “hidden injuries of class” (Sennett and Cobb 1972) to analyze the cumulative effects of social and environmental inequalities in China, contributing to interdisciplinary debates about environmental justice and health, environmental pollution in China, and the lived experiences of toxic geographies. We argue that people living and working with petrochemical pollution in Nanjing, China, experienced accumulated injuries of environmental injustice: multilayered and intersecting effects on health and well-being, which reflect social inequalities between different populations. Accumulated injuries of environmental injustice emerged in interrelated ways: epistemic injustices about toxic exposures; unequal and inadequate compensations for environment harm; and collective frustrations over political powerlessness. The research has wider implications for analyzing the complex social effects of living and working with environmental injustice in different places around the world. Key Words: China, environmental health, environmental justice, petrochemical industry, toxic pollution