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

Abstract

Environmental justice movements often contest environmental knowledge by engaging in scientific debates, which implies accepting the predominance of scientific discourses over alternative forms of knowledge. Using Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence, this paper warns that the engagement with hegemonic forms of knowledge production may reproduce, rather than challenge, existing social and environmental inequalities. The argument is developed with reference to a case study of coal ash pollution in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The case study shows that the construction of knowledge in a scientific project led to the exclusion of local definitions of the situation and the dismissal of their observations of environmental pollution. The case suggests that the capacity of different actors to put forward their interpretation of an environmental issue depends on the forms of symbolic violence that emerge within hegemonic discourses of the environment. Resumen: Los movimientos de justicia ambiental buscan a menudo impugnar el conocimiento del medio ambiente mediante la participación en debates científicos, lo que implica aceptar el predominio de los discursos científicos sobre formas de conocimiento alternativas. Usando el concepto de Bourdieu de violencia simbólica, este ensayo advierte de que adoptar un compromiso incondicional con la ciencia como una forma hegemónica de producción de conocimiento puede conducir a la reproducción de desigualdades sociales y ambientales, en lugar de su desafío. Este argumento se avanza en referencia a un estudio de caso de la contaminación de cenizas de carbón en Tuzla, Bosnia y Herzegovina. El estudio de caso muestra que la construcción del conocimiento en un proyecto científico condujo a la exclusión de definiciones y observaciones locales de la problemática ambiental. El caso sugiere que la capacidad de diferentes actores para presentar su interpretación de un problema ambiental depende de las formas de violencia simbólica que surgen dentro de los discursos hegemónicos sobre el medio ambiente y su manejo.

A global perspective on domestic energy deprivation: Overcoming the energy poverty–fuel poverty binary

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Flows, system boundaries and the politics of urban metabolism: Waste management in Mexico City and Santiago de Chile

“…However, engaging with these questions requires a refinement of urban metabolism's approaches. Analysing the principles and assumptions of knowledge production (their doxa) is a means to critically expose the political work of knowledge legitimisation and its governance consequences (Castán Broto, 2013). We suggest that can be done by revisiting two of its central analytical concepts: system boundaries and flows.…”

Intersectionality challenges for the co-production of urban services: notes for a theoretical and methodological agenda

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