Shaped by Chevron: race, responsibility, and resistance in Richmond, California.

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20316402

Richmond, California is known both for the Chevron Richmond oil refinery - one of the largest and oldest in the country - and for housing some of the most progressive politics in the country. A long history of environmental justice activism has culminated in Richmond becoming a Climate Justice Alliance Our Power pilot city for a just transition and germinated the Richmond Progressive Alliance, a progressive non-partisan political alliance fighting "Big Oil" on an unprecedented level. Though such a progressive movement has put Richmond on the map, it has also further exacerbated existing tensions within the city between different racial groups and with Chevron Richmond. This dissertation delves deep into community history to understand how the evolution of corporate community relations practices have shaped regional racial formation, community development, and community organizing in Richmond. By triangulating archival research, oral histories, interviews, and data from participant observation, this dissertation expounds on how place-making and sense of place are shaped by Chevron. The findings from this dissertation contribute to a range of literatures that focus on issues of environmental and social justice, including sociology, geography, and energy studies, by providing a critical analysis of corporate behaviors and its influence on lived experience and spatial memory. This dissertation argues that corporations play an active role in constituting local racial hierarchies, community development, and community organizing through three distinctive stages of corporate community relations. Moreover, it challenges common conceptions about environmental and social justice organizing by exploring the various ways that these practices further divide the very communities they seek to bring together. This dissertation provides critical research on life with oil to expound on understudied impacts of industrial polluters.