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Paper short abstract

In Rosignano Solvay, care and violence intertwine: industrial paternalism created bonds of belonging that persist even as contamination permeates bodies and landscapes, revealing how violence is enacted and becomes ordinary through care itself

Paper long abstract

Rosignano Solvay is an industrial town in Italy whose social and environmental history has been shaped by a major chemical plant. Decades of production have left enduring contamination that permeates everyday life.

Drawing on ethnographic research with families whose lives have been woven into the factory across generations, I examine how the paternalistic “cradle-to-grave” welfare system structured an architecture of memory mediating between the industrial past and the contaminated present. Welfare and company care produced deep attachment and belonging while simultaneously enabling chronic toxic exposure.

The industrial landscape, place names bearing the company’s mark, and collective narratives construct a material and symbolic geography where past care and present harm are inseparable. These memory structures shape how contamination is perceived and experienced, determining what is recognized as threat, what remains unspoken, and how bodies metabolize the toxic environment.

This contribution explores the care–violence nexus by tracing how welfare infrastructures generate forms of identity, attachment, and belonging that make environmental violence livable and transmissible across generations. Care in Rosignano does not simply mask or compensate for harm; it actively produces the conditions for its normalization, rendering slow, chronic violence imperceptible yet deeply embedded in everyday life.

By foregrounding the entanglement of care and violence, this paper highlights how industrial history, memory, and social structures converge to shape both perception and experience of chronic contamination, offering a lens to understand the ambivalent and enduring effects of care in industrial contexts