Toxic justice: An ethnography of industrial pollution, environmental advocacy, and suspended damage in Italy and Taiwan

Thesis

Current research in environmental justice is increasingly focusing on the international aspects of environmental inequality, advocating for new methods and tools to empower disenfranchised communities. This enables these communities to engage in global networks and influence international policy.

However, fenceline communities not actively involved in environmental initiatives are often overlooked. Grasping how politically marginalised fenceline communities perceive and respond to pollution is essential for developing a more comprehensive and inclusive concept of environmental justice.

This study delves into the collective experiences and understandings of pollution and the environment in two fenceline communities in Italy and Taiwan, both heavily affected by industrial pollution. In response to damage-centred approach to environmental justice, this research aims to produce new theoretical and methodological resources that enable these communities to engage in and contribute to a global environmental justice movement.

I begin by analysing environmental advocacy movements in the two sites, focusing on the epistemic rift between activists and marginalised residents. I identify this rift in diverging epistemic grammars that lead to different valuations and experiences of industrial chemicals. An analysis of the processes of knowledge production among marginalised residents unveils ways of understanding and relating to pollution that are temporally diluted and embodied. Specifically, I show how pollution also enables socio-cultural reproduction in fenceline communities. I conceptualise these knowledge practices in the notion of toxic justice, a framework that holds together often seemingly contradictory aspirations to justice.

Authors: Ippolito, AR

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-nya1neyek
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English