The Library
Slow violence and toxic geographies : ‘out of sight’ to whom?
Tools
Tools
Tools
Davies, Thom (2022) Slow violence and toxic geographies : ‘out of sight’ to whom? Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 40 (2). pp. 409-427. doi:10.1177/2399654419841063 ISSN 2399-6544.
|
PDF
WRAP-slow-violence-toxic-geographies-Davies-2019.pdf - Accepted Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0. Download (669Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2399654419841063
Abstract
Toxic pollution is a form of violence. This article explores the gradual brutalities that communities surrounded by petrochemical infrastructure endure over time. Contributing to political geographies of violence and environmental justice, this paper puts the concept of ‘slow violence’ into critical comparison with work on ‘structural violence’. In doing so, the paper makes two key contributions: First, it emphasizes the intimate connections between structural and slow forms of harm, arguing that structural inequality can mutate into noxious instances of slow violence. Second, the paper pushes back against framings of toxic landscapes as entirely invisible to the people they impact. Instead of accepting the standard definition of slow violence as ‘out of sight’, we have to instead ask the question: ‘out of sight to whom?’ In asking this question, and taking seriously the knowledge claims of communities who inhabit toxic spaces, we can begin to unravel the political structures that sustain the uneven geographies of pollution. Based on long-term ethnographic research in a postcolonial region of Louisiana, nicknamed ‘Cancer Alley’, this paper reveals how people gradually ‘witness’ the impacts of slow violence in their everyday lives. Finally, drawing on the notion of ‘epistemic violence’, the paper suggests that slow violence does not persist due to a lack of arresting stories about pollution, but because these stories do not count, thus rendering certain populations and geographies vulnerable to sacrifice.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences T Technology > TD Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering |
||||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Pollution , Environmental justice -- Louisiana, Pollutants, Environmental toxicology | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space | ||||||||
| Publisher: | SAGE Publications | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 2399-6544 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | 1 March 2022 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
|
||||||||
| Volume: | 40 | ||||||||
| Number: | 2 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 409-427 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1177/2399654419841063 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 22 August 2019 | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 9 September 2019 | ||||||||
| RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
|
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year
