Exploring the lay/expert divide: the attribution of responsibilities for coal ash pollution in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

Invoking expert knowledge is a common strategy in attempts to settle environmental disputes. However, the validity of expertise is contingent upon the context in which an actor is recognised as an expert. In complex environmental conflicts the distinction between lay and expert knowledge is not always fixed a priori. However, as conflicts unfold, intervening parties tend to present their cases in ways that reinforce this distinction. This is apparent in the attribution of environmental responsibilities. This paper presents an empirical case of an environmental conflict related to land contamination due to coal ash disposal in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The analysis revealed two polar positions in the conflict: the first one, mainly held by scientists and industry representatives, invoked expert knowledge and presented a distributed approach to the attribution of responsibilities; the second one, mainly held by local residents and municipal officials, presented an experiential understanding of pollution, as lay knowledge, and attributed direct responsibilities to the local energy industry. The paper concludes that the persistence of the distinction between expert and lay knowledge is a manifestation of the social structures that underlie the conflict.

Symbolic Violence and the Politics of Environmental Pollution Science: The Case of Coal Ash Pollution in Bosnia and Herzegovina

“…It draws attention not only to the specific methods which produce it—the counting of llamas or the production of indigenous professionals—but also to taken‐for‐granted processes of knowledge production and tacit assumptions about how the world works which explicitly or implicitly reproduce power structures and social relations. For example, the expert and lay knowledge distinction looming at the heart of the aforementioned critiques is enacted in quotidian spaces of intervention (Irwin 2001; Castán Broto 2012a). Symbolic violence is thus reproduced in actions naturalised in everyday life.…”