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- Convenors:
-
Vasiliki Neofotistos
(SUNY at Buffalo)
Rozita Dimova (Ghent University)
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- Formats:
- Panels
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 21 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
The panel interrogates the conditions under which adverse transformations impacting the quality of air, soil, or water and ecological crises emerge, examines local reactions to environmental degradation, and explores the broader implications of living close to environmentally hazardous areas.
Long Abstract:
This panel is located at the intersection of two core themes pertaining to new anthropological horizons in Europe, namely, environmental hazards and everyday life in regions in the periphery of Europe. We seek to interrogate the social, political, and economic conditions under which adverse transformations impacting the quality of air, soil, or water and ecological crises emerge, analyze how environmental destruction is understood and by whom, examine reactions of communities and grassroots organizations to environmental (chemical and microbial) degradation, and explore the broader implications of living in proximity to environmentally hazardous areas. We are interested in analyzing these questions from the perspective of people living in countries in the periphery of Europe -especially North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, and Albania-, but we will also consider empirically grounded contributions addressing the above-mentioned questions in Central and South Eastern European countries that have joined the European Union. Our goal is to shed light on the intimate connections among global disparities of power and influence, environmental injustice (such as, for example, cases of manufacturing polluting facilities in marginal areas or appropriating natural resources of weaker communities), and vulnerability (physical, economic, natural, or social) to environmental hazards. The panel also welcomes papers analyzing theoretical and methodological challenges surrounding ethnographic research on environmental hazards in Europe, including how anthropology can contribute to a better understanding of how to survive, conceived in broad terms, in the world today.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 21 July, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
Waste functions as a source of symbolic capital used during elections in Sofia. Thus alienates the subject from those who treat and manage it on a daily basis and links it to topics such as unemployment and technology. As a result the topic of environmental hazards of waste is rarely addressed.
Paper long abstract:
Waste has always followed human civilization through its history. However, it has just recently become such a complicated topic. The process of its physical decomposition challenges the boundary between nature and culture (Edensor, 2005; Reno, 2016). While waste materiality plays a central role in the imagination around the category, pre-defines its treatment and management. Those specifics within the construction of waste as a materiality, the reactions it engenders deeply influence human and institutional behavior about waste treatment but also the way it is constructed as an economic category.
The EU framework in the Bulgarian post-socialist context has even a deeper effect on the relation towards waste. Apart from the local and historically rooted transformations, the administrative pressure of the EU legislation harmonization process brings new dimensions on the regulations, conceptualizations and treatments of waste. Narratives on waste have become plural, and garbage itself gets lost within the multiplicity of categories each of them demanding its own approach of dealing with.
In the case of Sofia, waste function primarily as a resource used at a level of politics intended at gaining symbolic capital. Alienating the subject from those who actually recycle and manage it on a daily basis, technologizing discourses and hiding waste enhance its symbolic potential but alienate it from its materiality. Moving waste into the field of election campaigns and linking it to topics such as unemployment and technology exacerbates this effect, while refusing to concentrate efforts on waste treatment provokes even more intense imagination around the category.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I am interested in examining different understandings of environmental risk in North Macedonia. I argue that the production of confusion and uncertainty over the extent of air pollution is a key part of environmental suffering.
Paper long abstract:
In 2018, the Macedonian capital city of Skopje was declared Europe's most polluted capital in terms of the potentially lethal concentrations of PM10 and PM2.5 fine particles suspended in the air. In this paper, I am interested in examining different understandings of environmental risk in North Macedonia. I am especially interested in the denial, carried out by institutions, and the uncertainty, produced by government officials and corporate personnel, over the extent of air pollution. Confusion is so generalized that major Petre Shilegov announced in late 2018 that Skopje was one of the European cities that had officially entered the competition for the European Green Capital Award 2021. I argue that the production of confusion and uncertainty over the extent of air pollution is a key part of environmental suffering.
Paper short abstract:
This paper documents the activism of several eco associations in the border region to stop the construction and activities of the open-pit copper and gold mines, and the collaboration between the eco-activists from Greece and North Macedonia.
Paper long abstract:
In 2016-2017 citizens and activists of the Gevgelija-Valandovo-Dojran border region carried out a series of organized protests and referendums to stop the work of the open-pit copper and gold mines such as Kazandol, Konjsko and Ilovica. These mines were part of concessions for exploration and exploitation issued in 2013 that allowed the foreign investors from Ukraine and Canada to extract minerals by using sulfuric and cyanide acid. This paper documents the activism of several civil associations, such as SOS Valandovo and SOS Gevgelija, to protect their habitat and agricultural production. The conjunction of activism, investigative journalism and, especially, the cross-border cooperation with activists from Greece, paved the way for the 2019 termination of the contract between the government in North Macedonia and the Ukrainian mining company Sardic MC in charge of Kazandol. Similar open-pit mine for extraction of gold has been operating in the village Skouries on Chalkidiki in Greece. The protests in 2013-2014 however did not manage to stop the mining activities of the Canadian Eldorado company. The EU austerity measures, along with the pressure placed on Greece for foreign investments in the peak of the Greek financial crisis, prevented even the Tsipras' government elected in 2015 to terminate the contract -- despite Syriza's promise during the election campaign to stop the mine's activity. Regardless of the failure to close the mine, the eco-association SOS Chalkidiki set up a model for the eco-activists in North Macedonia who pursued their successful struggle against the operation of the Kazandol mine.
Paper short abstract:
The paper questions the entanglements between environmental and cultural dispossession in nowadays Bulgaria. Based on a recent case study of a water crisis, it explores local communities' reactions that use masquerade practices in their protest against public authorities and corporate companies.
Paper long abstract:
In 2019 a water regime in the town of Pernik and its surroundings (West Central Bulgaria) was introduced. People were informed that the dam is almost empty and can provide water just for few months. It became also clear that municipal, regional and governmental authorities have been aware of this hazardous situation but had hidden it and not addressed it because of upcoming elections. Tens of thousands of inhabitants were left with irregular and insufficient water supply. Lack of rain or snow, together with long-lasting air pollution raised local environmental concerns and activist movements. The tension escalated further when the annual masquerade festival was cancelled due to the water crisis. This international event is the biggest of its type on the Balkans and celebrates the local mumming tradition. In the region of Pernik, there are more than 50 masquerade groups which perform in their villages and also in the urban parade. The rite itself is extremely prestigious for the national imagery and is part of the UNESCO ICH Representative List. Thus, mutually reinforcing their resilience, discontent energies merged into several joint actions against public authorities and business companies.
Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork, the paper suggests a look at the entanglements between environmental and cultural dispossession articulated through such activities. Going beyond the division between natural and cultural heritage, it highlights local communities' reactions that strategically mobilise ritual in civic activism. The paper explores both how traditional masquerade practices become a sign-vehicle of current concerns, and how protests incorporate ritual elements.
Paper short abstract:
Our paper focus on the situation of a peripheral Slovakian village which have to deal with absence of drinkable water due to combinational of environmental and structural conditions. We will discuss the frameworks in which the construction of water pipeline is being negotiated by different actors.
Paper long abstract:
Since 2008 we have been conducting ethnographic research in the small village in Southern Slovakia. This region have been considered a periphery for a long time and never have been a main target of the infrastructural development, due to unfavourable sociodemographic and economic markers. The village suffers from the absence of drinkable water, because ground water has been contaminated by non-ecological agricultural production and combination of structural reasons such as disinterest of the state in development of this type of settlements and economic calculations of water supply enterprise prevented successful construction of the water pipeline.
Our paper deals with negotiations concerning the construction of a water pipeline between municipality officials and the state and water supply enterprise. Understanding the infrastructures as a media through which political power and symbols operate, we wonder in this paper how this battle for drinkable water is reflected in the political and social relations both within the municipality and in its relations with regional and national political centres. We argue that the problem of establishing infrastructure reveals vulnerability of marginalized areas and populations on the one hand and their resilience on the other. By focusing on how the infrastructure which would solve the unfavourable environmental conditions of the village's inhabitants is being negotiated, we are interested in what strategies of adaptation or resilience does the absence of infrastructure create, both on individual/communal and official/unofficial local social and political levels.