Green Criminology and Social Justice: A Reexamination of the Lynemouth Plant Closing and the Political Economic Causes of Environmental and Social Injustice

Abstract

Pamela Ann Davies argues that the closure of the Lynemouth, UK, aluminum smelter generated adverse social justice impacts and was caused by the adoption of green state policies. She employs that argument to critique green criminology for promoting adverse social justice impacts. Here, we reanalyze the Lynemouth plant closure. First, this reanalysis illustrates the various social and environmental forms of injustice the plant generated, especially its adverse human, nonhuman and ecological health consequences. Second, the closure is reassessed from a political economic perspective that places the plant closure within the context of global capitalist plant closures in the aluminum industry. That review notes that plant closures and deindustrialization in developed economies are now a common occurrence driven by economic concerns, not environmental policies. We point out that social injustice as well as ecological destruction are often created by the normal operation of capitalism, and that those consequences should not be overlooked.

Resource Nationalism and the Violation of Indigenous Rights in Mexico’s Oil Industry: The Case of a Chontal Community in Tabasco

“…Following Lynch (2015), the trade-off between jobs and health/the environment that Indigenous members face in Oxiacaque is a defining characteristic of the contemporary global economy and not, as Davies suggests, a product that results from global environmental demands to abandon unsustainable industries. Against this backdrop, resource nationalism is functional to the expansion of capitalism under the leadership of the state.…”

Green Criminology

“…A more complete articulation between PEG-C and environmental sociology only began to emerge more recently (e.g., Long et al, 2012;Stretesky & Lynch, 2009a). In these works, the connection between PEG-C and environmental sociology were drawn much more clearly and definitively, particularly in Stretesky et al's (2013a) book, The Treadmill of Crime: Political Economy and Green Criminology, and several related publications (Lynch, 2016b;Lynch et al, , 2016bStretesky et al, 2013b). We examine those arguments below.…”

Green Criminology and Environmental Crime: Criminology That Matters in the Age of Global Ecological Collapse

“…There are mineral and precious metal markets and rare earth markets. There is a metal manufacturing market that has shifted across the global as the nature of the global world capitalist system changes, which has been misunderstood, and generates extensive ecological damage (Lynch, 2016b). Little attention has been paid to the green victimization of native/Indigenous people (Lynch, Stretesky & Long, 2018b).…”