Premium
Symbolic Violence and the Politics of Environmental Pollution Science: The Case of Coal Ash Pollution in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Author(s) -
Broto Vanesa Castán
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
antipode
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.177
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 1467-8330
pISSN - 0066-4812
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01059.x
Subject(s) - contest , hegemony , environmental justice , argument (complex analysis) , politics , environmental pollution , sociology , sociology of scientific knowledge , the symbolic , dismissal , political science , law , social science , environmental protection , environmental science , psychology , biochemistry , chemistry , psychoanalysis
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.