Working-class ecology and union politics: a conceptual topology

Grassroots Ecologies of Value: Environmental Conflict and Social Reproduction in Southern Italy

“…The proposal was received with irritation in Brindisi, a city already burdened by the cumbersome presence of heavy industries . Reframing the governor’s proposal in the language of the environmental justice movement, one can say that Brindisi had been designated as “sacrifice zone”—an area whose residents are exposed more than others to the environmental risks related to heavy industry, pollution, toxic waste and contamination (Lerner ; see also Barca and Leonardi :493). As a matter of fact, local environmentalist groups, echoing a broader common‐sense discourse, often mobilised the view that the “troubled history” of local industrialisation had made the area a suitable site for plants and infrastructures with severe pollution and other impacts, implying that the area had been sacrificed a long time before.…”

“…Finally, the framework addresses the plural forms through which the inner logics of capital accumulation can be contested and questioned by valuation practices grounded in the dilemmas of working people regarding their livelihoods and social reproduction. In this respect, my argument is receptive to a long‐standing tradition of labour environmentalism (Barca ; Stevis et al ) and more recent elaborations of a Working‐Class Community Ecology approach, which views working people in industrialised areas as “intrinsically ecological subjects” capable of standing up for projects of socio‐ecological transformation (Barca and Leonardi :489).…”

“…In this respect, their activity can be read as the search for a common ground from which to articulate a liberation narrative that emphasised the primacy of reproduction over production, and addressed the relevance of the reproductive sphere for people’s livelihoods. By doing so, they were rephrasing the socio‐ecological conflict along the lines of reproductive struggles, connecting to similar experiences of women’s activism (Armiero ; Barca and Leonardi ; Di Chiro ; Zabonati ). Making visible distinctive valuation practices in the face of the perceived inevitability of the labour/health trade‐off—a framework in which health, environment and the children’s vulnerable existence are not negotiable—they were also trying to envision and pursue a collective revaluation project (Collins ) capable of redefining value relations to the benefit of social reproduction and long‐term collective well‐being (see Franquesa ).…”

“…Environmental issues in Brindisi are a telling example of “ecological distribution conflicts” (Martinez‐Alier ) in contemporary Italy and, at the same time, the legacy of the spatial history of capitalist development in the peninsula, with the main network of oil‐based industries having been located in the peripheral southern regions. Indeed, southern Italy provides a relevant case to address the nexus between uneven development and environmental inequality, and for mapping a paradigm shift of environmental struggles in areas historically targeted by heavy industrial development projects (Barca and Leonardi ; Greco ).…”

Work and Social-Ecological Transitions: A Critical Review of Five Contrasting Approaches

“…The concomitant ecological, economic and political dimensions of work is generally attributed to labour environmentalism as part of the broader field of environmental labour studies [72][73][74][75]. Labour environmentalism considers work a particular space of tension, domination and resistance concerning the negative environmental and social impacts of industrial capitalism [76,77].…”