Interpreting Industry's Impacts: Micropolitical Ecologies of Divergent Community Responses

Abstract

Where governments have failed to protect their citizens from the environmental and social impacts of industrial development, social movements have often arisen in response. However, other community members may defend — sometimes violently — the same corporations that are targeted by their peers. The contributions to this cluster explore some of the ways in which communities disagree about how to respond to the ecological impacts of industry, their reactions inflected by differential concerns about economics, landscapes, indigenous rights and human health. The three studies illustrate the heterogeneity that communities display in their interpretations of, and responses to, industrial development, and demonstrate how this diversity informs, in crucial ways, grassroots activism against the development, or acceptance of it. In particular, this cluster examines how community‐scale actions, and the interpretations of industry's impacts upon which these actions are based, are contested through multiple discourses centred around community identities and boundaries.

Soccer fields? What for? Effectiveness of corporate social responsibility initiatives in the mining industry

“…This example is consistent with Horowitz (2011Horowitz ( , p. 1384, who suggests that in some cases communities support a company CSR initiative despite its impact because of the perceived economic benefits, in a 'silent habituation to contamination'. According to the exlawyer involved in a lawsuit against the company, the community supported the CSR initiatives related to lead without questioning the mining company and assuming that people who become sick just did not follow the rules to live there.…”

“…There is heterogeneity between communities and intra-communities, based on their identity and boundaries. Thus, they respond to industry impacts in different ways, such as the threats that economic development may represent to the security and integrity of a community in terms of ecological degradation and the capacity of the population to control the resources that it considers as belonging to them (Horowitz, 2011).…”

Contested claims over space and identity between fishers and the oil industry in Mexico

“…Most studies of these phenomena examine situations where local resource users have succeeded in collectively mobilizing against extractive industries. However, understanding contemporary struggles over resource governance demands that we also consider the less visible, less governable and yet common spaces of contestation and counter-struggles for political representation that have received relatively scant academic attention (Auyero and Swistun, 2009;Horowitz, 2011;Perreault and Valdivia, 2010).…”

From cutlines to traplines: Post-industrial land use at the Pine Point mine

“…We examine this complex interplay between extractive development, indigenous land use, and deindustrialization through the lens of a ''micropolitical ecology'' (Horowitz, 2010(Horowitz, , 2011 of land use change. The literature on the political ecology of extractive development focuses on resource conflicts and environmental impacts on indigenous peoples' traditional territories (Bebbington et al, 2008;Keeling and Sandlos, 2009;Bebbington, 2012).…”