Castan Broto, V; (2016) Dwelling in a Pollution Landscape. In: Vaccaro, I and Harper, K and Murray, S, (eds.) The Anthropology of Post Industrialism- Ethnographies of Disconnection. (pp. 91-112). Routledge: New York, Abigndon.

Text Dwellinginpollutionlandscapes_politicalecologybook(1).pdf Access restricted to UCL open access staff Download (903kB)

Abstract

Industrialisation and post-industrialisation in the post-Fordist era have led to the production of landscapes characterised by the transgression of industrial systems, including, for example, large wastelands and abandoned brownfields. These landscapes are ‘pollution landscapes’ in the sense that they are not simply landscapes containing pollution, but rather, they are landscapes in which the pollution is an active component producing a collective experience of nature and place (Castán Broto et al, 2007). Research on experiences and responses of people coping with pollution in their doorstep have used Goffman’s work on stigma to explain how pollution may be “normalised” in everyday life- thus vanishing in the landscape- and how pollution can be re- exemptionalised through environmental activism and discourses of environmental justice. This paper advocates Ingold’s notion of dwelling to understand the co-construction of pollution landscapes through a myriad of collective social, economic, political and ecological process in which the agency of the landscape affects its collective experience and it is re-shaped by it. In particular, I am interested in the extent to which people’s experiences of a landscape influence the way they intervene in local processes of environmental governance. The paper will revisit the example of coal ash disposal in a pollution landscape in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, to explore the practices of dwelling that produce and re-produce normality and anomaly in a pollution landscape.

Download activity - last month

Export as JSONCSVXML

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as JSONCSVXML

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as JSONXMLCSV

Archive Staff Only

View Item