A sensory and visual approach for comprehending environmental victimization by the asbestos industry in Casale Monferrato

Abstract

Although Europe has banned asbestos since 2005, many of the occupational and environmental harms perpetrated by the industry are still appearing. The aim of this paper is to present a new methodological technique to explore and map the social perception of these environmental crimes and harms. In particular, we ask: how do social actors feel about and interpret asbestos-related environmental crimes and harms? To answer this question, we applied a technique defined as ‘itinerant soliloquy’ to a specific context: Casale Monferrato (Italy). As the cognitive dimension is not enough to catch the complexity of these events, the itinerant soliloquy tries to increase the value of the experiential and reflexive encounter of the walking, the observing, the interpreting and the narrating.

Exploring Violent Cosmologies From a “Radical Interactionist” Approach

“…In this regard, our proposal suggests that the internal conversation-often elliptical-which precedes the act is not coincident with-and is not the same as-the story narrated after action. It is in this moment that the role of the criminologist in co-constructing the stories of the participants may be crucial to creating mutable and more open-ended narratives (see also Natali 2019; Natali and Budó 2019;Natali et al 2020).…”

Corporate Crime and the Use of Science in the Case of Asbestos: Producing Harm Through Discursive Shields

“…As Faria (2018, p. 58) notes, “one way to address the need to prevent, regulate, and sanction RM [research misconduct] is to try to understand its harmful consequences.” The temporalities pointed out above in which I address the representations about the consequences of research misconduct are interesting when thinking about harm and victimization (Hylliard & Tombs, 2005; Faria, 2018). These theoretical definitions also approach the subject of green criminology, particularly when the scientific misconduct creates pollution and toxic contamination, exposing a wide spectrum of possible environmental victims (Beirne & South, 2013; Natali & Budó, 2019; Wyatt, 2017). Political consequences in regulation are often linked with harms guided to the future, and the victims are represented as workers from the global South, mainly from places where access to health is not universal and qualified.…”

“…Furuya et al (2018) claim that this number is underestimated and offer another one: 255,000 deaths a year. Although some countries in Europe prohibited asbestos as early as the 1990s, it was not until 2005 that the European Union adhered to this policy (Natali & Budó, 2019). In the USA, despite the absence of a legally mandated ban on asbestos, there has been a decline in its use, because of the millions of dollars in worker compensation lawsuits (Lemen & Landingan, 2017).…”

Visually exploring social perceptions of environmental harm in global urban contexts

“…The second technique I have employed in order to investigate the individuals' social perception of environmental harms has, as its aim (and motivation), the diverting of attention from the visual representations available in the 'virtual' space of the web to the physical and sensorial dimension linked to the personal experience of the city where one lives. The itinerant soliloquy is partly inspired by the explorations of visual anthropologist Andrew Irving (2011) and is intended to decipher 'how spaces become places' (Brisman and South, 2014;Nuvolati, 2011: 14), in the concrete complexity of the dynamic relationship between social actor and living space (see Natali, 2016a;Natali and Budó, 2018).…”