Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the relation between class consciousness and environmentalism by comparing trade unionism and grass-root activists to generate awareness against detrimental industrial policies and privatisation processes in Terni and its steel plant, a highly polluted Italian company-town.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on my doctoral fieldwork conducted in 2014/2015 among ThyssenKrupp-AST steelworkers in Terni during a long period of unrest, which ended with the dismissal of over 500 workers and the partial closure of the plant. This moment of working-class activism was met by the community with solidarity for the workers, and renewed concerns for environmental hazards caused by the plant.

The question of industrial pollution has been widely debated when analysing the socio-economic cost borne by industrial company-towns, especially through Political Ecology and Eco-Marxist lenses. Literature shows that, since deindustrialization, industrial workers and unions have lost their leading role towards environmental struggle to community-centred grass-root activism, causing a shift in social science research from working-class to community issue (Barca 2012; 2016).

This paper discusses longitudinal ethnographic data focusing on the history and role of USB, a new trade union formed in AST during the industrial dispute. In a present context of possible downsizing and 'green' restructuring of the plant, and in juxtaposition to traditional unions, USB initiated conversations with local environmentalist groups to combine the safeguard of jobs with that of health and environment.

This paper closely examines relations between USB and grass-root activism in defence of the natural environment beyond heavy industry, and maps resistance using class as key explanatory concept and analytical tool (Carrier and Kalb 2015) to shed new light on class-consciousness as an agent to environmental activism, and for new kinds of research which overcome the conflict between labour and environment.

Paper short abstract:

To replace the dominant paradigms of how food is produced, consumed and valued, food movements have started to (re)imply the concept of food as a commons. This development changes how food policies are being shaped for and in cities while new practices of "food commoning" are evolving.

Paper long abstract:

Food has become thoroughly commodified throughout late modern societies, possibly limiting our imagination of how food production and consumption could be governed. However, new initiatives are proposing to rethink food along the lines of the commons concept.

According to Ostrom´s model of polycentric governance, treating food as a commons might lead not only to a different production and distribution but would also have an enormous impact on how civic actions, the private sector and the state interact and which kind of policies are going to be developed for and in cities.

The practice of commoning can therefore be seen as a way to replace dominant paradigms of how food is to be produced, sold, consumed and valued. "Commoners" are (re-) discovering how to interact with each other and to take responsibility in innovative ways in a transformation process towards more sustainable food systems. This is happening in many European cities today. My paper will present findings from ongoing fieldwork on food policies and food initiatives, comparing Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Vienna.

With the city of Amsterdam as my main example, I want to discuss how the food commons movement is aiming to change how food production and consumption are going to be governed in the future and to show new practices of "food commoning" that are currently evolving.

Paper short abstract:

Through an ambulatory ethnography, we will question the urban mobility of bicycle activists. In their workshops, demonstrations and daily itineraries their political and environmental struggle materializes at the intersection of multiple axes, including the body, the city and technology.

Paper long abstract:

In bicycle activism, we must understand mobility as a mobile dwelling. More than a form of travel or displacement, it is an active and sensitive way of living the environment and a way of making the city on the move. The bicycle, a total symbol of environmentalism, is an ordinary but densely politicized and complex materiality. In this paper, through an incarnated and ambulatory ethnography -attentive to the practices, displacements, emotions, tactics, discourses and spaces of bicycle activism in the European urban context- we will cross the intersections between economy, ecology, politics and technology through concrete fieldwork examples. In local workshops based on recycling and bikes self-construction; in European meetings and assemblies; or in festive and rolling protests through the accelerated neoliberal city, the political cultures of mobility -in their paradoxes and ambiguities- express themselves, rebel and perform through a particular policy of materiality. Deceleration, reconnection with environment, carbon footprint reduction, human scale or the calm pace of cycling streets are imagined and precariously made transitions in the articulation of three main material fields: body, bicycle and the city. In this way, by assembling and mobilizing urban mobility, socioenvironmental conflicts such as energy crisis and climate change, or manifest realities such as pollution, they are contested with greater or lesser success by bicycle activism. This activism and this way of life shows us, finally, how environmental struggles cannot today be understood but as constant and unfinished sociopolitical processes of articulation, intersection and assemblage

Paper short abstract:

Climate change and its consequences are driving the spread of numerous social movements contesting the environmental disruption. In this paper, I analyze the narratives and tactics of the Pacific Climate Warriors in relation to local ecologies in Ouvéa, an island off the coast of New Caledonia.

Paper long abstract:

Climate change and its consequences, especially in Oceania, are driving the spread of numerous social movements contesting the politics of the present and the actual environmental disruption. In this paper, I analyze the narratives and tactics of the Pacific Climate Warriors, a transnational organization with strong ties to international association 350.org; and local ecologies in Ouvéa, an island off the coast of New Caledonia. While the Pacific Climate Warriors rhetoric tries to regain agency for its militants, contesting the victimization of the Pacific islands and islanders, the Warriors are strongly demanding international action to stop the process of climate change. On the other side, there is no official climate movement in Ouvéa (nor Pacific Warriors fighting against climate change) despite the consciousness of the ecological ravage that takes place on the island: the environmental issues in Ouvéa (broadly in New Caledonia) are strongly tied to politics and to the colonial regime under which New Caledonia is still governed by France today. These two different modes of protesting and organizing, while analogous and simultaneous (they share the same vindications), are not communicating between them due to the diverse languages they are speaking. Which knowledges can the anthropologist produce to help the situation? Acting as a medium between these two realities, can he/she build a bridge to connect transnational social movements and local ecologies?

Paper short abstract:

Tensions between farmers and the State have emerged after the reintroduction of the brown bear in the Pyrenees. Although the conflict has brought about new struggles and forms of resistance, it must be seen within a larger historical context of rebellions and opposition to the State in the region.

Paper long abstract:

The reintroduction of the brown bear in the Pyrenees launched by the French government and the EU in 1996 has brought about a process of valorization —deeming the bear as the hallmark of wilderness— based on a previous devalorization —undermining these territories as a place for agropastoral production. It is also a vivid example of an environmental conservation project implemented by the State and contested through resistance and conflict. In Ariège —where predation rates are the highest by far among the Pyrenean districts— farmers have engaged in street protests and everyday forms of resistance, opposing implementing a set of measures recently funded by government agencies to prevent bear attacks, rejecting changing their herding practices, or boycotting State officers' work. These prevention measures, the ensuing transformation of herding practices and the bear itself have been perceived as State impositions by farmers. Although mountain pastures are State lands, farmers envisage them as their mountains and resent a loss of governance and a feeling of dispossession. I argue that the present conflict in Ariège entailed new struggles and forms of resistance, but it must be seen within a larger context of a historical opposition to the State in the region. Peasant revolts followed the implementation of the 1827 Forest Code, in which administrators justified the partitioning of uncultivated communal holdings and eliminated customary rights while blaming peasants for forest degradation. I suggest that these two forms of dispossession share a similar mechanism through which the State disciplines rural communities and imposes its will.

Paper short abstract:

In 2010, an IDF helicopter crash in the Carpathian Mountains left no survivors. Government investigations concluded the crash was "most likely due to human error". Romanian right-wing media disagreed: the mountains struck down the IDF helicopter, defending "ancestral land" from foreign occupation.

Paper long abstract:

In July of 2010, an Israeli military helicopter crashed in the tall Carpathian Mountains, killing everyone on board. While government investigations decided the crash was "most likely due to human error", Romanian right-wing media continued to inspect the event and to interview witnesses and military personnel and concluded that the Carpathian Mountains struck the Israeli helicopter down, punishing the foreigners for trying to "occupy ancestral land". In discourses surrounding the helicopter crash, the mountains are imagined as sentient landscape, as animate social actors expressing discontent, punishing certain types of human action - and more importantly ethno-religious Others. The article analyses the event in the broader context of Romania's long history of antisemitism (between 1941-1944, the Romanian fascist government exterminated almost 400,000 Jews), as well as current discourses of indigeneity, foreign occupation, and far-right values driving the Romanian media and politics.

Paper short abstract:

The study assesses Andean mining conflict and monitoring interactions, departing from the analysis of the politics of pollution and risk perception, in order to understand the causes of struggles from the perspectives and valuation of the contentious groups involved in nature engagement.

Paper long abstract:

The recent expansion of the Andean mining frontier has increased clashes between central governments and companies against marginalized populations. There is limited empirical ethnological models explaining the interactions of groups involved in sub-national conflicts, especially based on residents and their perceptions of nature, when protesting against mining pollution. Politics about animated entities related to mining resources, pollution monitoring and perception of environmental risks have become key issues for understanding conflictive encounters. The research based on long-term multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork comparing transnational Andean mining cases covers findings on explanations of struggles surrounding natural resources as well as cultural relations with nature. The ethnological analysis frames interpretative ethnological models of interactions among conflictive groups while building a critique to cost-benefit analysis of externalities, undermining local perceptions, as well as the cultural relationship between residents with animals, plants, and other non-human entities.

Paper short abstract:

Our research with two Indigenous communities in Sorowako, Indonesia, shows that participatory ethnographic methods such as photovoice allow researchers to identify intent and consciousness in acts of everyday resistance to resource extraction.

Paper long abstract:

Rural women who depend on healthy lands and water to survive are increasingly mounting a formidable resistance to resource extraction in their backyards. Resistance to nickel mining by multinational investors in Sorowako, Indonesia has existed since the operation started taking land from farmers in the 1970s. However, little is known about women's everyday resistance to mining in Sorowako. Acts of everyday resistance tend to be subtle acts that can too easily be dismissed by distant observers as survival and coping strategies. We conducted a photovoice study with women from two Indigenous communities affected by the Vale nickel mining operation, the Karonsi'e Dongi and Sorowako communities. At a time when resistance scholars debate whether to include intent and consciousness in their studies of resistance (Johansson and Vinthagen, 2016), we argue that intent and consciousness matter when identifying an act as resistance and that conscious intent in resistance can be discerned in participatory ethnographic research methods such as photovoice. Our study revealed that the women are aware of their oppression and of the structural and intersectional nature of their oppression, namely how processes of dispossession and exploitation for mining affect them as rural women from either community. This awareness affects the way they respond to the mining operation, including how they resist the oppressive nature of mining in their everyday lives. Everyday acts of the women, such as accessing forbidden land, can be considered resistance because the women intend to lessen their domination and better their conditions.