Toxicities that matter: Slow bureaucracy and polluting temporalities in a southern Italian city

Abstract

This paper deconstructs toxicity through a juxtaposition of a conventional epidemiological approach to pollutants and the lived experience of a highly polluted residential area next to the largest steel production plant in Europe. An ethnographic analysis of toxicity in Taranto illustrates the complexity of various temporal scales through which toxic chemicals contribute to new biological, political and moral balances. Attuning to the slow experiences of pollution is fundamental to shed light on the processes moulding aspirations to environmental justice within the community. In particular, law and bureaucracy imbue pollutants with experiential legitimacy, allowing them to be seen, contested and collectivized. I focus on the residents’ and workers’ dissonant experiences with the bureaucratic system to illustrate how their encounter with asbestos has profoundly shaped toxic exposure to less bureaucratically visible shapeshifting pollutants, thus contributing to a diffused sense of political resignation.