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... Moreover, our exploration found that knowledge has an indirect effect on precautionary behavior by influencing individual risk perception [27]. Our hypothesis suggests that forestry workers, who have a higher propensity for accepting risks in response to only immediate risks, as observed in [21], may require a more intensive intervention approach to increase their understanding of the significance of preventive actions in mitigating the long-term consequences of slowonset disasters [28][29][30]. This is in contrast to safety issues caused by sudden events, such as falling trees or accidents involving chainsaws, which are often regarded as "sudden disasters" due to their abrupt nature [31]. ...
... The logical connections among these constructs are graphically depicted in Figure 1, highlighting the crucial role played by knowledge and risk perception in shaping the precautionary behavior. of the significance of preventive actions in mitigating the long-term consequences of slowonset disasters [28][29][30]. This is in contrast to safety issues caused by sudden events, such as falling trees or accidents involving chainsaws, which are often regarded as "sudden disasters" due to their abrupt nature [31]. ...
... Occupational safety and health (OSH) problems caused by falling trees or saws tend to happen quickly and suddenly or are considered a "sudden disaster" [31]. In contrast, health problems caused by heat exposure tend to be delayed, noted as a "slow-onset disaster" [28][29][30]. Slow-onset catastrophes have effects that take years to appear and are typically identified long after the first sign of danger [60]. Because the impacts are often observed over several years and decades rather than in hours or days, people tend to eventually accept risk as a natural occurrence [29]. ...
Forestry workers play a crucial role in implementing forest management programs, but their outdoor work exposes them to rising temperatures caused by global climate change, which poses potential health risks related to heat. This study specifically investigates the relationship between knowledge of heat-related issues, risk perception, and precautionary behavior among Indonesian forestry workers and paddy farmers in response to the escalating workplace heat exposure. Developing effective precautionary behavior is essential for preventing heat-related health disorders and promoting health protection programs. To investigate the association of the latent variables comprehensively, structured interviews were conducted with two occupational groups of outdoor workers, comprising 210 forestry workers and 215 paddy farmers. The findings indicate that increasing knowledge about heat-related issues promotes precautionary behavior, and risk perception acts as a mediator between knowledge and behavior. Additionally, the study highlights that the emotion of “dread” intensifies the perceived risk and predicts positive behavior changes. To enhance heat-related knowledge, exploring the potential use of a “fear” tone is important. In conclusion, comprehensive strategies should be implemented to promote precautionary behavior among forestry workers, particularly manual laborers, who are more vulnerable compared to farmers.
... The remainder of this paper identifies prominent concerns within geographies of toxicity and interrogates them in respect to household mold. The third section draws on previous work on toxic geographies that have taken (slow) temporalitiesparticularly concepts of "slow violence" (Nixon 2011) and "slow death" (Berlant 2007) -as a productive line of enquiry (Davies 2018;Senanayake 2020;O'Lear 2021;Dewan and Sibilia 2024;Jha 2023). In doing so, it first addresses the politics of (in)visibility of household mold, noting the tension between spectacular and mundane forms of violence, and then moves to the spatial and temporal displacement of harm and violence in relation to popular framings of mold as a "crisis" or "epidemic." ...
... That is not to say existing work is incompatible or oppositional to reading mold toxically. In fact, Kane (2023) notably interpolates Davies' (2022) work on toxic geographies and his adoption of the idea of "slow violence" (Nixon 2011), when suggesting that the decaying materialities of austere housing conditions erode homely borders. As such, research highlighting the ambivalent relationship between boundaries, permeability, and porosity in relation to toxic landscapes (Roberts 2017) can help enhance readings of mold as an "out-of-place" intruder that disturbs domestic borders, in a similar vein to that shown in work concerning insects and toxic pesticides in domestic ecologies (Biehler 2009). ...
... Geography, specifically that engaging with toxicity, has demonstrated a mounting interest in modalities of violence overlooked in part due to their slowness. The prominent work by Nixon (2011) characterizes "slow violence" through two key features: its relative invisibility and temporal and spatial dispersion. Given the typical insidious onset of mold and the material degradation of housing conditions more broadly, reading mold in relation to these concepts produces generative lines of thinking that push against popular framings of fast, spectacularized "crisis" and draw out the tensions generated by the mundane and the accretive. ...
Situating household mold within a growing body of critical geography concerned with toxicity and exposures, this paper interrogates the racial logics and temporal dynamics of “toxic” mold. Responding to heightened public interest and governmental intervention in mold in the United Kingdom in recent years, this paper addresses the underexamination of mold in both housing and toxic geography scholarship. The “contemporary mold crisis” is located against a longer international history of toxic mold exposure, revealing toxicity as a multivalent designation through which certain homes, spaces, and bodies are rendered as toxic more readily than others. This paper argues that attuning closely to the materialities of dwelling conditions can produce generative and highly precise work through which one can attain a better understanding of modalities of violence and harm in a housing context. In parallel, it demonstrates the political value of attending to a “mundane” and “banal” toxin such as mold in geography.
... Around 160 million children currently live in areas experiencing high levels o drought, and about 503 million children are exposed to a high risk o oods due to EWEs such as This raming allows us to capture both, the visible and invisible aspects inherent in violence (c.. Nixon, 2011). We view the relationship between VAC and EWEs as a process rather than a standalone event. ...
... Children-s mental and physical health can also be compromised by sudden or gradual changes in amily or community dynamics, such as an increase in domestic violence in homes, ater an environmental shock due to parental stress. Nixon (2011) defnes this as direct violence o delayed eects. Using this shited perspective on VAC, we hope to shed light on persisting 'climate injustices-, disadvantaging children born in LLMICs the most, ortifed by underlying social and geographical disadvantages (Braveman & Gruskin, 2003). ...
... Second, children born in LLMICs have a higher risk exposure to EWEs (UNICEF, 2021) while at the same time acing challenges in accessing health providers and services unable to protect them, which constitutes a structural orm o violence. Third, we can also observe violence o delayed eects (Nixon, 2011), such as increased PTSD or mental stress among caregivers and peers ater an EWE, which exposes children to a greater risk o experiencing domestic violence or violence in communities and schools. ...
Background: Only recently have research and policy begun to shine a light on the magnifying effects of EWEs (Extreme Weather Events) on children’s exposure to violence. However, the links between EWEs and VAC (Violence against Children) remain under-theorised, poorly understood and often unacknowledged in policy and practice.
Objective: Identify, synthesize and analyse available evidence on the central characteristics and factors influencing the relationship between VAC and EWEs.
Methods: We conducted an extensive scoping review of the literature (academic and grey) to identify existing research and gaps in knowledge. Using flexible and iteratively developed search terms enabled us to identify direct violence – physical, sexual and emotional – and structural violence, rooted in inequitable and unjust systems and institutions.
Results: The relationship between VAC and EWEs is linked to gender; climate-induced mobility or immobility; child labour; and health. We found that VAC can intensify during EWEs, but the nature of this relationship is contextually specific. The relationship between VAC and EWEs is rooted in historical injustices, global systems and structures, and therefore disproportionately affects those living in poverty.
Conclusion: Studies have uncovered how increasing social, economic and emotional pressures following EWEs increase children’s violence risk exposure. This may occur in their homes or in relief shelters. The violence may involve peers, or forms of hazardous labour that young people are compelled into because of the sudden need for families to rebuild or help make ends meet. More knowledge is needed to inform integrated, context-specific and culturally sensitive plans to better protect children from the consequences of EWEs.
... Environmental degradation is a form of slow violence. As Nixon [21] writes: "By slow violence I mean a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all". Slow violence necessitates thinking about what constitutes harm and violence beyond short-term time scales and singular causes to consider "slowly unfolding environmental catastrophes" [21]. ...
... As Nixon [21] writes: "By slow violence I mean a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all". Slow violence necessitates thinking about what constitutes harm and violence beyond short-term time scales and singular causes to consider "slowly unfolding environmental catastrophes" [21]. Slow violence provides an avenue by which to look beyond the obvious and the immediate in examining environmental changes and social injustices. ...
... It is ever-present in sustainability management of ecosystems, shellfish such as scallop, fisheries, wetlands, and freshwater eel. Indeed, the work of De Leeuw, Bacon and Nixon [12,19,21,58,88] highlights the critical need for Indigenous and non-Indigenous ally researchers to examine how slow violence constrains Indigenous self-determination rights, impedes Indigenous capacities to access their lands/waters/foods, and impacts the intimate scales of home and the gendered body [54,88,89]. ...
We examine the ecosystem degradation of the Kaipara moana as an example of the nexus of settler colonialism and slow violence. Settler colonialism is a type of domination that violently interrupts Indigenous people’s interactions and relationships with their land-, sea-, and water-scapes. Slow violence provides a conceptual framework to explore the slow and invisible erosion of ecosystems and to make visible how unseen violence inflicted upon nature (such as deforestation and sedimentation pollution) also unfolds at the intimate scale of the Indigenous body and household. Here, we present how the structural violence of settler colonialism and ecological transformations created a form of settler colonial slow violence for humans and more-than-humans which highlights the ethical and justice features of sustainability because of the link with settler-colonialism. We argue for the need to include local knowledge and lived experiences of slow violence to ensure ethical and just ensuring practices that better attend to the relationships between Indigenous peoples and their more-than-human kin (including plants, animals, rivers, mountains, and seas). We build on this argument using auto- and duo-ethnographic research to identify possibilities for making sense of and making visible those forms of harm, loss and dispossession that frequently remain intangible in public, political and academic representations of land-, sea-, and water-scapes. Situated in the Kaipara moana, Aotearoa New Zealand, narratives are rescued from invisibility and representational bias and stories of water pollution, deforestation, institutional racism, species and habitat loss form the narratives of slow violence. (Please see Glossary for translation of Māori language, terms and names.)
... Occupational safety and health (OSH) problems caused by falling trees or saws tend to happen quickly and suddenly or are considered a "sudden disaster" [58]. In contrast, health problems caused by heat exposure tend to be delayed, noted as a "slow-onset disaster" [57], [59], [60]. Slow-onset catastrophes have effects that take years to appear and are typically identified long after the first sign of danger [61]. ...
... Slow-onset catastrophes have effects that take years to appear and are typically identified long after the first sign of danger [61]. Because the impacts are often observed over several years and decades rather than in hours or days, people tend to eventually accept risk as a natural occurrence [60]. It is important to note that while workplace heat exposure could affect workers' health, well-being, and productivity, as well as social and economic factors on a larger scale [8], [11], [62], acclimatization is possible [63]. ...
Forestry workers play a crucial role in implementing forest management programs, but their outdoor work exposes them to rising temperatures caused by global climate change, which poses potential health risks related to heat. This study focuses on Indonesian forestry workers and examines the relationship between their knowledge of heat-related issues, risk perception, and precautionary behavior in dealing with increasing workplace heat exposure. Developing effective precautionary behavior is essential for preventing heat-related health disorders and promoting health protection programs. To facilitate a comprehensive comparison of the three variables, interviews were conducted with two groups of outdoor workers, comprising 210 forestry workers and 215 paddy farmers. The findings indicate that increasing knowledge about heat-related issues promotes precautionary behavior, and risk perception acts as a mediator between knowledge and behavior. Additionally, the study highlights that the emotion of "dread" intensifies perceived risk and predicts positive behavior change. To enhance heat-related knowledge, exploring the potential use of a "fear" tone is important. In conclusion, comprehensive strategies need to be implemented to promote precautionary behavior among vulnerable forestry workers, particularly manual laborers.
... Te One and Bargh's article is both generous and ultimately hopeful; they offer their critical analysis to "support positive change" (2024, p. 2). Their analysis highlights how working in tertiary spaces comes with countless daily forms of "slow violence" (Nixon, 2013) and "epistemic violence" (Spivak, 1988). They nonetheless extend this challenge to us out of profound care for students and aspirations for the discipline. ...
This article is a rejoinder to two previous articles about the political science discipline in Aotearoa New Zealand published in The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education: Annie Te One and Maria Bargh’s “Towards a Fairer and More Tika Political Science and Politics: Are Political Science Programs Equipping Students Adequately for Aotearoa Realities?” (vol. 52, no. 2) and Jack Vowles’s “Fairness, Tika and Political Science in Aotearoa New Zealand: Some ‘Inconvenient Evidence’” (vol. 53, no. 1).
... In addition, this study will add to the growing literature on sustainable development and the necessity of mental health in hopes of environmental resilience/sustainability. As the existential factors related to natural disasters and climate change become increasingly significant for human health and well-being, it is of particular importance today that we understand how these affect us psychologically [11]. This will allow the development of comprehensive strategies that tackle environmental change on a physical or economic scale and support mental health and well-being within impacted communities. ...
Climate change and environmental deterioration threaten mental health worldwide. Disasters’ physical and economic effects are well-known, but their psychological effects are not. This comprehensive review will examine the psychological effects of climate change and environmental degradation on people’s mental health, which groups are most at risk, and best practices for addressing those concerns. We searched PubMed, PsycINFO, and Web of Science for PRISMA-compliant peer-reviewed articles (2000-2024). Both featured studies on the mental health effects of climate change and environmental deterioration. The review found increased anxiety, despair, and PTSD, especially in vulnerable communities, including children, the elderly, and those living in poor or disaster-prone locations. The research lists community support, mental health services, and legislative solutions for social factors such as environmental stress and racism as coping mechanisms and remedies. These findings emphasize the need for mental health interventions and policies to address the psychological effects of climate change and environmental degradation. Mental health outcomes and preventative strategies for vulnerable populations require longitudinal study. This report emphasizes the link between environmental and psychological well-being and calls for a coordinated response to climate change and double action.
... En cierta forma, podría decirse que esas víctimas carecen de respetabilidad social porque son tratadas como objetos que, respondiendo al sentido etimológico de "víctima", deben ser sacrifi cadas (instrumentalizadas o cosifi cadas) por un fi n superior, por lo que son solo entendidas como medios para dicho fi n superior o, si se quiere, daños colaterales o menores respecto de otros más importantes, conforme a parámetros culturales, sociales, económicos, religiosos y, fi nalmente, jurídicos. Somos así testigos indiferentes de una violencia lenta (Nixon, 2011), de formas de silencio (Mathiesen, 2015) e intervenciones ecocidas o teriocidas en relación con el cambio climático, la contaminación y la reducción de la biodiversidad que afecta a la sociedad planetaria 4 , pero también el ataque al bienestar animal a un nivel menos global. Además, todo esto se produce hoy dentro de una atmósfera de populismo negacionista y polarizador, por parte de partidos de extrema derecha en diversos países, utilizando la desinformación y las noticias falsas en las redes sociales, así como de malestar social de comunidades rurales afectadas por la crisis económica. ...
... La crisis socioambiental se vincula con lo que se ha denominado como zonas de sacrificio, un "concepto que permite enmarcar, imaginar, identificar y clasificar un lugar con el propósito de cuestionar actividades productivas percibidas como destructivas" (Holifield y Day, 2017, p. 269). Es decir, son áreas o extensiones de tierra destruidas, envenenadas o inhabitables cuya consecuencia es la degradación de toda forma de vida y de los ecosistemas que la alojan bajo lo que se denomina "violencia ambiental" (Nixon, 2011): casos de inundaciones, sequías, incendios, procesos de contaminación del agua y del aire mediante sustancias tóxicas, entre otros. Esto se contrapone con la idea de entender al ambiente como una trama compleja entre naturaleza y sociedades humanas, entre interacciones biofísicas y socioculturales (Reboratti, 2000), donde el ser humano en un actor más entre otros con los cuales vive e interacciona. ...
En este artículo se propone analizar la visualidad construida en rechazo a la potencial explotación petrolera en la costa Atlántica (provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina). Estas acciones críticas forman parte del conjunto de demandas socioambientales que en la actualidad oponen al modelo de desarrollo basado en el extractivismo. Por un lado, se estudiarán algunas imágenes producidas en el marco de las marchas denominadas Atlanticazo. Por otro, se analizará la creación de una estampita, llamada San Lobito de Mar, imagen acompañada de una oración de protección contra la acción humana dañina. Se concluye que las imágenes estudiadas tienen un potencial contravisual: posicionan a los seres vivientes y su entorno en un rol activo, desde la exigencia del derecho a vivir y existir y no como mero recursos a ser explotados por el humano. La metodología propuesta, es cualitativa, basada en entrevistas a activistas, análisis iconográfico y recolección de información en redes sociales y medios digitales. Asimismo, el marco teórico recupera herramientas provistas por los Estudios visuales, la Teoría política y la Ecología política.
... It is due to such overdetermined features that Kevin Hetherington calls museums "seeing-saying machines" that act as nodal points of emergence "in which some social relations are established and others are broken down" (2011:459). A museum is also a site where the artificiality, arbitrariness, and constructed nature of ostensibly solid and transhistorical phenomena such as nation-states are thrown into sharp relief; hence the sense of anachronism and displacement that always suffuses museums in fiction and fact-take as paradigmatic examples Nigeria, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, and Syria-all simply "inventions" of the British Empire (see Nixon 2011). ...
The premiere of Hannah Khalil’s A Museum in Baghdad (2019) marks a critical juncture in the history of contemporary British drama. The play is informed by a decolonial dynamic, a longue durée vision, and an evental mode of memory; and renders the museum as a multivalent allegorical space. The complicities of culture, imperialism, and resource extractivism are revealed.
... These silences often reflected a lack of cultural scripts around non-curative cancer, and mortality more generally. As such, a lack of recognition of incurability, represented a form of 'slow violence', impacting the social bonds of those living with metastatic breast cancer (Barnwell, 2019;Nixon, 2011). Social bonds were also threatened by a triangulation of flows of information and updates. ...
As the culture of silence that once surrounded cancer has gradually given way to greater public awareness, normative visions of what cancer survivorship should entail have proliferated. These visions emphasise positivity and perseverance in pursuit of cure. While these visions provide comfort to many, for people with metastatic cancer, the emphasis on cure can undermine their sense of belonging to the broader collective of people living with cancer. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 38 Australian women living with metastatic breast cancer, we explore how incurable cancer inflects understandings of self and transforms interpersonal relationships. Extending ideas around biosociality and belonging, we explore the tenuousness of social bonds, revealing how (in)visibility, (in)authenticity and (in)validation circulate within the daily lives of women with metastatic breast cancer. We conceptualise accounts according to four social bonds: (1) threatened bonds where a relationship is strained by misunderstanding, (2) severed bonds where a relationship is ruptured due to misunderstanding, (3) attuned bonds whereby a relationship is based on shared identification and (4) flexible social bonds when a relationship is based on mutual understanding. More broadly, we illustrate the persistence of normative visions of cancer survivorship and their enduring effects on those whom such visions exclude.
... As the rehabilitation of the Tijuana River canal reveals, 'the repair of environments in which we live, vast swathes of which are unproductive and/or outright toxic' (Lock 2018, 468), can result in the deployment of punitive policies against marginalised subjects who have come to be associated with the Anthropocene's abjected terrains. In this context, the canal's homeless deportee community has been simultaneously subjected to both the slow violence (Nixon 2018) of living at the toxic margins of society, and the faster violence of policing and punitive rehabilitation. ...
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among homeless deportees living in the Tijuana River canal, I examine how the ‘rehabilitation’ of toxic terrains can have corporeal and social consequences for those inhabiting such spaces. For decades, the Tijuana River basin traversing the U.S.–Mexico border has been perceived by officials from both countries as an unruly body of water. Prone to persistent flooding, the canal also experiences flows of toxic sewage from Tijuana’s maquiladora industry. In recent years, the riverbed in Tijuana has been inhabited by homeless and drug using communities, many of whom have been deported from the U.S. In response, rehabilitation of the canal and forced drug rehabilitation have been conjoined and promoted by the state as solutions for managing this unruly terrain and its residents. I take the deployment of the term ‘rehabilitation’ targeting both homeless deportees and the canal as an opportunity to consider how the concurrent disciplining of landscapes and human populations has been a central and evolving feature of the Anthropocene. I examine how my homeless interlocutors have experienced ‘rehabilitation’ as a violent process of abjection, dispossession, and captivity, which has converted this transborder landscape structure into a carceral zone under the guise of urban sanitation and health promotion.
... Como isso afeta de diferentes maneiras os grupos sociais nessas regiões? A exposição de outros a poluição e desastres ambientais não pode ser analisada como violência 81 ? ...
Tradução, a partir do original em francês, do prefácio e dos capítulos 1 e 2 do livro de Christophe Bonneuil e Jean-Baptiste Fressoz. L’événement Anthropocène. La terre, l’histoire et nous. Paris : Seuil, 2016 [2013].
... However, except for calming the school community and making individual decisions, the power our principals had was ultimately quite limited, and they were 'between power and powerlessness' (Levay & Andersson Bäck, 2022, p. 953). Thus, although they had more power, they shared the same (Auyero & Swistun, 2009), and 'slow violence' (Nixon, 2011) as members of contaminated communities in general. The second dimension, uncertainty, is closely intertwined with loss of control (Afifi et al., 2014;McCormick, 2002), and it is one of the key foundations of suffering in contaminated communities (Edelstein, 2018;Vyner, 1988). ...
The environmental suffering of contaminated communities has been analysed in depth. However, there is a lack of knowledge about the environmental suffering of such communities’ leaders. Our study aimed to shed light on this issue through interviews with 20 principals working in schools with poor indoor-air quality in Finland. Based on reflexive thematical analysis, we identified three themes: (1) being burdened and powerless; (2) being on a knife-edge; (3) being worried in the face of the unknown. These themes were organised by three interpenetrating key factors: power, uncertainty, and responsibility. Although our principals shared the same experiences as members of contaminated communities in general, their environmental suffering also differed from those. Altogether, leading a school with poor indoor-air quality was a highly burdensome and stressful task. Research so far has mainly concentrated on contaminated communities in contexts of large-scale technological hazards and disasters. Researchers should pay closer attention to the everyday environmental suffering in schools and other workplaces and especially to their leaders since leaders play important roles in supporting well-being of followers in environments that are perceived as a threat.
... Given the pace at which environmental pollutants and other toxic substances impact the body, some have described the cumulative impact of exposure as a form of "slow violence." This concept, drawn from the work of Rob Nixon (2006Nixon ( , 2011, attempts to bring attention to both the harm which exposure to these chemicals brings to human bodies as well as the slow pace at which harm occurs, which conflicts with common understandings of violence as something that is rapid and discrete. ...
This paper explores the ways in which the differential access to space and the environments of the two Detroits relates to health and wellness of residents. Drawing upon the concept of environmental racism, this paper first illustrates how the exposure to harmful pollutants is differentially distributed within the two Detroits. This exposure to pollutants constitutes a form of "slow violence," that operates to negatively impact the health of populations. The impact of this exposure manifests itself in various ways. This paper draw upon data concerning asthma rates within Detroit to illustrate that disease is not only inequitably distributed across the two Detroits, but health promoting resources such as access to medical care and grocery stores are also inequitably distributed. Cumulatively, this paper argues that the inequality of the two Detroit's is not only social and geographical, but becomes embodied. Such that the racialized populations suffer from disproportionately worse health outcomes than those of white residents living near Downtown and Midtown.
... Sediments have the capacity to absorb and accumulate dissolved nutrients and chemicals, as well as store pollutants for extended periods of time, releasing them gradually over decades. Therefore, sampling sediments can be an effective means of detecting anthropogenic water contamination (Ayrault et al. 2021;Parrinello and Kondolf 2021). It is striking that in all the years of testing conducted by the Army and state authorities, no sediment sampling had been done. ...
In recent years, the issue of military waste disposal in oceans and seas has gained significant attention; however, the impact of such waste in freshwater deposits has been understudied. The Laurentian Great Lakes of North America contain 20% of the world’s fresh surface water and are particularly vulnerable to environmental stressors such as climate change, invasive species, and toxic chemicals, making the examination of military waste management in these waters crucial. This interdisciplinary study aims to investigate the legacy of two military waste disposal sites in Lake Superior, referred to as Site A (containing barrels) and Site B (containing bullets). Both are located within the ceded territories of the Ojibwe. Despite being in close proximity, these sites have had vastly different outcomes in terms of public concern, state and federal regulatory actions, and tribal restoration efforts. Based on this observation, this study aims to answer the following questions: How did these differences develop? How did military secrecy and the loss of memory influence the management of underwater military waste at each site? How do uncertainties and rumors continue to influence citizen concern and agency management of military waste? We argue for the importance of investigating the environmental legacies of underwater military waste in order to protect inland freshwater resources worldwide.
... 1-12) argue that the resulting poverty was a form of "slow violence". The term "slow violence" originates in Nixon's (2011) examination of the incremental and, often hidden, violence that environmental damage causes to human community. However, we suggest, with Powers and Rakopoulos (2019) and Cooper and Whyte (2017) that the term also captures the persistent but often hidden damage wrought by Government policy since the 2010 General Election and the grinding trauma of austerity-age poverty. ...
The ‘Age of Austerity’ has ruptured the social fabric of contemporary Britain. Arising from our three-year Life on the Breadline project, this article represents the first fieldwork-led analysis of the multidimensional nature of austerity-age poverty by academic theologians in the UK. The article analyses the impact that austerity has had on Christian responses to poverty and inequality in the UK. We draw on our six ethnographic case studies and interview responses from over 120 national and regional Church leaders to exemplify the four approaches to the Christian engagement with poverty that we identified during our research: ‘caring’, ‘campaigning and advocacy’, ‘enterprise’ and ‘community building’. We argue that the Church needs to grasp the systemic, multidimensional and violent nature of poverty in order to realise the potential embedded in its extensive social capital and fulfil its goal of ‘transforming structural injustice’. The paper shows that the Church remains nervous of moving beyond welfare-based responses to poverty and suggests that none of the existing approaches can force poverty into retreat until the Church re-imagines itself as a liberative movement that embodies God’s preferential option for the poor in every aspect of its life and practice.
... Todo lo anterior nos hace pensar en los puentes peatonales como elementos urbanos que contribuyen a la violencia infraestructural. Esta se define como aquella violencia que ocurre gradualmente y fuera de la vista y de manera tardía, dispersándose en el tiempo y el espacio, siendo una violencia de desgaste que normalmente no se considera violencia en absoluto (Nixon, 2015;Rodgers y O'Neill, 2012). Así, construidos como supuestos elementos de salvación, los puentes peatonales en Chihuahua han acumulado con el tiempo decenas de víctimas (a menudo actores marginados), pero han recibido poca atención porque la responsabilidad de sus efectos nocivos se re-direcciona sobre el individuo, de manera que la responsabilidad del siniestro vial siempre recae sobre la víctima por no adaptarse a la infraestructura y a las distintas dimensiones del espacio público alrededor. ...
La construcción de puentes peatonales en las ciudades latinoamericanas se ha planteado bajo el supuesto de que estas infraestructuras juegan un papel importante en la reducción de siniestros viales, específicamente en los atropellamientos a transeúntes. Sin embargo, es común encontrar reportes de personas atropelladas en las inmediaciones de tales infraestructuras, siendo, además, difícil encontrar documentos que evalúen la eficiencia o contribución de los puentes peatonales en la disminución de atropellamientos. El presente documento examina la relación entre los puentes peatonales de la ciudad de Chihuahua, México, y el número de peatones atropellados en sus inmediaciones. El análisis inició con la evaluación de la caminabilidad en los entornos en donde se ubican los puentes peatonales; posteriormente se utilizaron sistemas de información geográfica para la geolocalización de casos de atropellamientos en el periodo 2015-2020 y se realizó un análisis multivariante utilizando algoritmos genéticos. Los resultados obtenidos evidenciaron que un 34,7% de los atropellamientos en Chihuahua ocurre a 300 metros a la redonda de un puente peatonal y que la velocidad vehicular, la distancia de cruce al usar los puentes peatonales y las barreras a nivel de calle son descriptores que contribuyen de manera significativa en los riesgos viales que afrontan los transeúntes. Se concluye que en la ciudad de Chihuahua los puentes peatonales no contribuyen en la mejora de las condiciones de seguridad vial peatonal.
... There are over 1000 uninhabited villages in Uttarakhand (Upadhyay, 2018), and the state government labels them as ghost villages. People in such villages with marginal populations become 'ghosted communities' (Nixon, 2011), invisible to the government and the mainstream media. ...
Human-induced global climate change is associated with population migration as places become uninhabitable. Uttarakhand is one of India’s most ecologically fragile and climatically vulnerable states. There are massive disparities between the hill and the plain districts as the development initiatives remain concentrated in the plain districts. The inadequacy of the state government, coupled with environmental changes, has made the life of the hill communities challenging. Many people have migrated from the hills resulting in depopulated or ghost villages. Based on interviews with 75 people, the article attempts to shed light on changes that occur when the inhabitants of a place leave. Loss of a place and its community life can have severe implications on the well-being of the people. Respondents showed a range of emotions, including the longing for their homes before the onset of environmental changes. With more intense and frequent climatic events, it has become essential to understand such social and cultural costs of migration.
... The scuba trash diver group points out that although most of the waste in the water is not visible from land, it still remains there, and as time passes by, it continuously leaks toxic elements. I have argued that the work of the divers addresses a type of 'slow violence' that for decades has accumulated in the marine environment (Nixon 2011). This long-time perspective is used by the divers to make a 'moral punctuation' when they bring the waste out of the water and put it up for display (Ahmann 2018). ...
This article draws upon my doctoral fieldwork conducted between 2019 and 2021 among scuba trash divers in Stockholm, Sweden. The article provides an overview of developments in waste management in Stockholm, explaining how water has turned from a dump for waste to a resource. We will dive with the divers into these cold and dark Nordic waters, following their quest to clean the waters and educate the larger public about the issue of growing amounts of underwater waste. The divers use the underwater waste from the past, as also from current times, as a 'moral punctuation' (Ahmann 2018), stressing the urgent need to engage with the waste that has accumulated over time. The outreach by the divers is largely done via social media, where images are used to tell a story about those issues which normally remain invisible. Furthermore, I will emphasise the importance of engaging the field sensuously to understand the conditions during trash dives.
... På samma vis som vattenbristen synliggör sociala grupperingar, visar det sig att begreppet 'kris' kan betraktas som ett specifikt mikro-politiskt nyckelbegrepp. Den extrema torkan i Västra Kapprovinsen beskrivs som en kris vilket signalerar oförutsedda händelser och döljer det faktum att situationen innebär det Nixon kallar för slow violence -en långsam världsomspännande utveckling som leder till katastrofal klimatpåverkan, vattenbrist och fattigdom(Nixon 2011; jfr Shepherd 2019;Harris et al. 2018; Booysen, Visser & Burger 2018). Att beskriva torkan som en akut uppkommen situation, lyfter ansvaret från myndigheters axlar för att läggas på civilsamhället. ...
... The knowledge claims by those living with the "slow suffering" from environmental pollution are often overlooked (Davies, 2019: 14). As Davies (2019: 14) argues, "[b]y interrogating the seemingly 'out of sight' (Nixon, 2011: 2) nature of slow violence, and instead asking 'out of sight to whom? we can become more attentive to alternative perspectives and knowledge claims in polluted spaces." ...
This paper critically interrogates the usefulness of the concept of violence regimes for social politics, social analysis, and social theory. In the first case, violence regimes address and inform politics and policy, that is, social politics, both around various forms of violence, such as gender-based violence, violence against women, anti-lesbian, gay and transgender violence, intimate partner violence, and more widely in terms of social and related policies and practices on violence and anti-violence. In the second case, violence regimes assist social analysis of the interconnections of different forms and aspects of violence, and relative autonomy from welfare regimes and gender regimes. Third, the violence regime concept engages a wider range of issues in social theory, including the exclusion of the knowledges of the violated, most obviously, but not only, when the voices and experiences of those killed are unheard. The concept directs attention to assumptions made in social theory as incorporating or neglecting violence. More specifically, it highlights the significance of: social effects beyond agency; autotelic ontology, that is, violence as a means and end in itself, and an inequality in itself; the relations of violence, sociality and social relations; violence and power, and the contested boundary between them; and materiality-discursivity in violence and what is to count as violence. These are key issues for both violence studies and social theory more generally.
... She finds that the dominant approaches, including their fixation on carbon indicators and their inherent cultural perception biases, obscure collateral damages on the local scale, ultimately causing the perpetuation of injustice in the access to resources. O'Lear (2015:2) links this phenomenon to Nixon (2011) 's concept of 'slow violence': "Slow violence is not a movement, as are environmental justice and climate justice, but it is a concept that focuses attention on latent, gradual, and invisible negative externalities related to mis-or abuse of environmental resources and ecosystems." ...
This paper examines the challenges of translating realia (elements of local reality deeply bound up with the universe of reference of the original culture) in the translation of Mudun al-Milḥ (Al-Tīh) by ʻAbd al-Raḥman Munīf, as rendered into English by Peter Theroux. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Sergei Vlakhov, Sider Florin, Lauren Leighton, Peter Newmark, and Susan Bassnett, the study compares and analyzes the original Arabic text and its English translation from the perspective of a bilingual (Arabic/English) Saudi. The paper argues that the concept of "realia" plays a critical role not only in understanding the novel's cultural setting but also in conveying the complexities of the Saudi/Bedouin identity and worldview. It examines how the translation process transcends linguistic equivalence, encompassing social, cultural, and historical realities that are challenging to transfer. The analysis emphasizes that the local reality in Al-Tīh extends beyond culturally specific terms to encompass the unique ways language is used within the community, and it reflects the lived experiences of its members in a way that can only be truly comprehended by those who are part of that community. The paper shows that these aspects result in varying degrees of cultural and linguistic untranslatability, where certain aspects are inevitably lost in translation. By examining key examples from both the original Arabic text and the English translation, it is demonstrated that differences in the "universe of reference" between Munīf’s and Theroux’s versions contribute to distortions in the portrayal of realia, ultimately affecting the representation of the novel’s cultural and social contexts.
Eco-dystopia or Eco-critical dystopia focuses on the environmental ruin and how that brings subsequent changes to the society. Eco-dystopia tells the stories of apocalypse, dilapidated earth, earth’s rebel against human exploitation and human adversity due to the loss of natural resources. These echo the environmental concerns that need to be addressed properly. Eco- dystopian novels articulate the near future crisis that stress much importance on the environmental disaster caused by human intervention. Dystopian novels in general speculate a society packed with dystopian elements such as technological control, religious control, loss of individuality, survival as well as environmental havoc. Major issues of climate change have been described in many dystopian novels throughout the years. For instance, Parable of the Sower, Tentacle, American war, The Fifth Season and so on predict the future, where global warming and pollution have led to the eradication of society. Extreme weather, food shortage, rising sea levels, high pollution, climate change have become the core of these novels.
We advance the literature on environmental justice by examining colorblind rhetoric as a mechanism sustaining environmental racism. Through a case study of one agricultural community in California actively contesting pesticide exposure, we examine the colorblind rhetoric and tactics that agricultural growers and state regulators engage to sustain pesticide practices in the face of racial harm. We identify five epistemic maneuvers: a) elevating public good claims, b) projecting morality and solidarity, c) inverting narratives of victimhood and innocence, d) promoting a scientific narrative, and e) disparaging dissenting voices. These
maneuvers normalize harm, minimize the negative impacts of pesticide exposure, absolve growers and state regulators from responsibility for racial harm, and discredit the knowledge
and experience of farmworkers and their representatives. Our findings contribute to understanding how environmental racism is sustained in a colorblind context through rhetoric and tactics that promote racial ignorance.
Plant rights, which are relatively new compared to animal rights theories have both negative and positive aspects. Because all of the negative rights established for animals are difficult to apply to plants, it is necessary to focus on positive relational responsibilities. For this reason, instead of applying the basic principles set out by animal rights theorists to plants, we are opening up discussions on issues that would prevent arbitrary violence against plants and their total instrumentalisation. Thus, we aim to evaluate the arbitrariness applied in both ordinary states and states of exception in the context of ecocide, ecological mourning, and the relationship between law and violence.
This chapter examines how immobility, temporariness, and waiting were differently lived and tentatively redefined by the men and women in the music group amid state-enforced procedures employing time as a necropolitical tool of deterrence. From these perspectives, the chapter addresses how making, listening, and moving to music were central in the participants’ attempts to make waiting an act (Khosravi, S., Migration: A COMPAS anthology. COMPAS, 2014) as they struggled to make the trapped conditions of their present habitable. The chapter then turns to interrogate recent “re-imaginings” of leisure in the twenty-first century as “an art of living” (Blackshaw, T., Re-imagining leisure studies. Routledge, 2017) through a perspective that draws on the work of critical disability scholar Arseli Dokumaci to conceptualise leisure as “acts and arts of survival in a shrinking world” (x). Through such a dialogue, the chapter discusses leisure conceptualisations that can illuminate key omissions in contemporary leisure theories while probing new ways to engage with the temporary, unnoticed, yet existing possibilities of “world-making” amid lives lived in a state of injury.
Elif Shafak's 2021 novel The Island of Missing Trees describes fictional events that occur on the real island of Cyprus during the war between the Greek and the Turkish inhabitants of the island. This story is told from multiple points of view at various points in time in both Cyprus and London, where the characters move to and live following the events of the war and their families’ disagreements with their relationship. What is unique about Shafak's storytelling is her use of a fig tree as a primary narrator of events. While the use of non-human narrators is not a new strategy, most of these occurrences involve animal speakers rather than plants or objects. In delivering a fiction narrative from the point of view of a fig tree, Elif Shafak's The Island of Missing Trees introduces readers to multispecies encounters by providing an example of how arboreal figures communicate and experience history alongside humans in an anthropocentric world, and further encourages prosocial behavior between human and non-human species. Based on Shafak's novel, theories of attentiveness and slow-violence, and studies on the effect of non-human narrators on readers, including these "non-living" narrators in widely accessible pieces of fiction not only informs audiences of the multispecies encounters that occur in everyday life, but also opens more avenues of multispecies conservation.
A ecocrítica se destaca entre os mais relevantes desdobramentos nos estudos literários contemporâneos, sobretudo no que tange ao campo da literatura comparada, da reflexão pós-colonial e do debate sobre literatura-mundial; trata-se, no entanto, de uma perspectiva teórica e analítica ainda pouco consolidada no Brasil, especialmente no âmbito da teoria e da crítica literárias. Tendo em conta a proliferação de categorias que de um modo geral pretendem observar o impacto (geológico) do humano em suas diversas subjetividades e através de perspectivas críticas distintas – antropoceno, capitaloceno plantationceno ou chthuluceno (Moore, 2016; Haraway 2015), entre outras – o ambiente, a ser entendido em sua inevitável convergência entre pessoas, animais, natureza e sistema-mundial capitalista, se configura como um tema e um problema também literário, oferecendo a possibilidades de se (re)definir a literatura – suas estéticas, formas e gêneros, bem como seus paradigmas críticos e conceituais – a partir de uma perspectiva eco-ambientalista.
Este artículo analiza el fotolibro Monsanto®: a Photographic Investigation del fotógrafo documental Mathieu Asselin. En primer lugar, se abordan los fotolibros desde una perspectiva semiótica, especialmente empleando las funciones de Roman Jakobson, y después, en este caso, se entiende parcialmente la diferencia entre fotolibros y fotoperiodismo como una cuestión de tiempo, ya que los fotolibros suelen informar sobre hechos que no están de actualidad. Después, se considera Monsanto® en relación con la tradición de los fotolibros bélicos, especialmente Agent Orange: «Collateral Damage» in Viet Nam, de Philip Jones Griffiths, y War against War!, de Ernst Friedrich. Asselin relaciona a las víctimas de la guerra con las víctimas de las corporaciones capitalistas, superando la diferencia colonial entre los soldados occidentales y las víctimas orientales, y profundizando en las causas del capitalismo bélico. Monsanto® también toma decisiones sobre los límites de la fotografía para presentar el mundo y, por ende, sobre la visibilidad. A diferencia de Friedrich, Asselin asume que la fotografía no tiene que representar visualmente todo lo que se cuenta en el libro, además, los pies de foto brindan información esencial y algunas fotografías solo pretenden mostrar lo que Asselin presenció. Finalmente, se utilizan las consideraciones de Nassim Nicholas Taleb sobre evidencias para comprender cómo la fotografía se destina a ser evidencia de hechos, lo que podría llevar a que las imágenes precedan y creen el evento relatado por ellas.
Hiriya landfill, in central Israel, served Tel Aviv for 50 years and became a byword for neglect and ugliness until it was recently transformed from an environmental hazard, into a beautiful park. This article explores the idea and experience of waste, as concept and matter, and its representations in the 2004 international design competition for Hiriya’s rehabilitation. Addressing the global issue of rehabilitating wasted sites, the competition encouraged landscape architects to address a polluted past and outline new cultural and ethical meanings in the reclaimed public space. Drawing from unexplored textual and visual sources, and combining landscape architecture with cultural studies on waste, we reveal that few of the 14 proposals touched upon the complexity of waste, with its cultural, ethical and social attributes. The winning entry by Peter Latz turned the mound into a striking monument to trash, but minimised the visitors’ idea and experience of the waste itself.
The concept of environmental violence (EV) explains the harm that humanity is inflicting upon itself through our pollution emissions. This book argues that EV is present, active, and expanding at alarming rates in the contemporary human niche and in the Earth system. It explains how EV is produced and facilitated by the same inequalities that it creates and reinforces, and suggests that the causes can be attributed to a relatively small portion of the human population and to a fairly circumscribed set of behaviours. While the causes of EV are complex, the author makes this complexity manageable to ensure interventions are more readily discernible. The EV-model developed is both a theoretical concept and an analytical tool, substantiated with rigorous social and environmental scientific evidence, and designed with the intention to help disrupt the cycle of violence with effective policies and real change.
In his cultural criticism, Edel Garcellano protests that literature is a politically partisan act in a “terrain of class war.” Cadre writings from “liberated” or “red” zones, Garcellano writes, demonstrate a clear partisanship with the peasants, workers, and other participants of the liberation struggle waged by the National Democratic movement in the Philippines. His commentary on the ideologization of writers invites us to investigate works produced in the context of the protracted people’s war to better understand the so-called “liberated consciousness” of cadre writers. Mobilizing Garcellano’s interpretive model of partisan symmetry between author and text, this paper critiques poems written by martyred red fighter Roger Felix Salditos—also known by his noms-de-guerre/plume Mayamor and Maya Daniel— published recently in the collection 50: Mga Binalaybay ni Roger Felix Salditos (Mayamor/Maya Daniel) with translations by Kerima Lorena Tariman (2020). Specifically, I take interest in the tropification of the natural environment in his writings. It has been observed that the figuration of ecology in National Democratic literature rejects representations of nature that reify the domination of the human species-being over their environment. I argue that Salditos’ poetry dramatizes a cadre’s inhabitation of the ecological terrain of the guerilla zone, shaped by conflicts over land rights and resource ownership. His ecopoetics gives readers insight on how a liberated consciousness involves learning from praxis within and a dialectical understanding of the natural environment.
Die natürlichen Lebensgrundlagen der Menschheit werden durch Klimawandel und Umweltzerstörung bedroht, die friedensgefährdende Ökozide mit sich bringen können. Seit fünf Jahrzehnten gibt es Bestrebungen, schwerwiegende Umweltverbrechen im Rahmen des Völkerrechts zu regulieren. Im Kontext der jüngsten Debatte über Klimaklagen und die Rechte der Natur eröffnen sich neue Perspektiven, um auf verschiedenen Ebenen des internationalen Systems mit rechtlichen Mitteln Umweltschutz und Friedenssicherung zusammenzubringen.
One of the most complex and vital networks of humans and non-human life forms part of the Amazonian territories. However, given the impact of human activities, the current (and not so new) violence in these territories has intensified year after year. While sustainability has become one of the most ubiquitous, contested, and essential concepts of our time, colonial legacies are inseparable from contemporary environmental issues. As the impacts of sustainable violence are mainly presented through images of ecology, the representation of Amazonia becomes a central element to debate the relation between hegemonic power and sustainability.
In this sense, this dissertation will analyse a group of images that maps the permanence of modern vision in Amazonia. The visualisation of Amazonia concerning ecological issues indicates that the environmental debate remains trapped in modern rationality. This is a central dimension of the threat to the continuity of life in these territories. Therefore, in order to contribute to a decolonial view on [Brazilian] Amazonia, this study argues that an adequate approach toward creating a sustainable future requires emancipation from the hegemonic way of perceiving Amazonia. Therefore, this dissertation aims to contribute to humans and non-human rights by speculating about the possibilities for social transformation in the aftermath of environmental ruin.
The policy paper addresses the nexus between gender, climate and security. Firstly, it refers to climate change as a threat multiplier, which exacerbates threats to peace and security. Secondly, it examines the gender dimension of climate change, arguing that climate-related security risks have a disproportionate impact on women and girls. Thirdly, the policy paper further explores how gender-responsive adaptation policies can contribute to sustainable peace and security in Africa. It argues that gender-responsive policy action that links climate adaptation, peace-building and sustainable development should be based on: stronger UN system-wide coherence, systematic gender mainstreaming, a human security approach, a human rights-based approach, stronger links with the UN Security Council Agenda on Women, Peace and Security, as well as coordinated, inclusive and research-based action that meets the special needs of Africa.
“Queer with the City” traces how urban and environmental context have shaped the commitments of queer cultural production in the United States. This dissertation articulates an urban environmental lineage of queer cultural production through a literary and visual approach to the redevelopment of New York City from the early 1950s to 2020. The project argues that the losses of the early era of AIDS to which much queer cultural production responds are inextricable from mounting public anxieties about climate change in the late 1980s and from the aftermath of a program of urban renewal that demolished nearly 7.5 million residences in the U.S. between 1950 and 1980. The project reads the entanglement of queer, environmental, and urban experiences of loss in the postwar United States through a cultural archive that brings those forms of loss into contact with one another in its attention to New York’s postwar redevelopment. “Queer with the City” begins with writing by James Baldwin, James Schuyler, and June Jordan that directly grapples with urban renewal in New York in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. It then follows the geography of renewal to the landscape of AIDS activism and climate anxiety in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the writing and visual art of David Wojnarowicz and Eileen Myles. The project’s final chapter and coda attend to these entangled conditions of queer, urban, and environmental loss through the late-2000s trans ecological poetics of Julian Talamantez Brolaski and N.K. Jemisin’s speculative writing in the late 2010s and early 2020s. This alternate lineage of queer cultural production models how urban and climate futures invested in justice can draw upon queer theory’s decades of analysis of the inextricability of racial, sexual, and gendered marginalization. How urban and climate planning and policy distribute life chances depends upon their understanding of how structural inequality manifests. “Queer with the City” argues that a cultural history of postwar redevelopment in the most populous city in the U.S. demonstrates the connection between queer, urban, and environmental loss. This cultural history contributes to an understanding of how structural inequality mediates processes of urban change.
OPEN ACCESS ON JOURNAL WEBSITE This article analyses the ways that young people create new futures in Taranto, Southern Italy, a city hosting one of the largest and most polluting steel factories in Europe. It draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Taranto and uses storytelling to understand how young people – a minority of residents aged between 24 and 35 years – shape futures in industrially polluted environments. The study weaves together geographic and anthropological scholarship about futures in (post‐)industrial cities, conceptualisations of breathing as well as lived experiences in highly polluted areas. Through mobilising the notion of breathing we highlight the embodied, entangled and emotional dimensions of the young people’s everyday practices and develop our concept of “breathing new futures”. We argue that both pollution and the envisioning of a new future become visible in everything the study’s participants do; the ways they promote environmental awareness, take care of animals or seek to foster children’s education. By focusing on generational differences, the study expands on recent scholarship analysing environmental pollution in relation to intersectional identities such as race, ethnicity and gender, and sheds light on the activities of young people to imagine and live new futures in polluted environments.
This article traces the roots of translingualism in the Global South, with particular relevance to the author’s South Asian heritage. After narrating his attempts to practice this orientation in his research and scholarship, the author analyzes the problematic ways in which translingualism is appropriated in the academic, economic, and political contexts in Global North. Employing the conceptual orientation of enregisterment, the article theorizes the challenges for decolonizing discourses in negotiating a critical and transformative uptake. It concludes by outlining some strategies that can help in entextualizing translingualism to preserve its decolonizing potential. It identifies areas of research that will expand the communities, contexts, and communication that will facilitate more pluriversal epistemologies and practices.
The authors take great pleasure in presenting to the readers this enlarged
and extensive book on literature and environment. The book is a valuable
asset to those literature students and researchers who are keen to study the
relationship between literature and nature and how different cultures of the
world are portrayed through fiction.
During the last few decades, there has been remarkable progress in research
on various aspects of how the relationships between literature and nature
have been depicted. Different fields have been explored and still, there are
so many fields yet to be explored. We often talk about how nature and
literature are interconnected and this book is an attempt to bring out their
relationship.
I want to argue not only for the necessity of salvaging what is left of the agrarian mind and way of life, but also for the necessity of its further development and proliferation. When we speak of the need for such a mind, we are not talking about mere nostalgia, but rather a practical necessity. Agrarianism requires no moral or spiritual language for justification; it grows out of a scientific understanding of how organisms interact within natural habitats, an understanding that is too greatly ignored in industrial approaches to agriculture.
This article focuses on the relationship between the creation of colonial agricultural and environmental knowledge and the exercise of state power in Kenya during a 25 year period that saw growing state dependence on African agriculture and evidence of the environmental costs of policies to expand such production. First, in the context of the political crisis in Kenya, which centred on the alienation of land to white settler farmers, it argues that the language of 'betterment' and 'environmentalism' became part of a bureaucratic apparatus. This, to follow James Ferguson,1 both extended state control more deeply into the Kikuyu Reserves and attempted to depoliticise the issue of land and its distribution. Second, in order to expose the political interests embedded in this construction of state knowledge, the article presents evidence to demonstrate that such knowledge was contested by some scientists within the colonial service. Third, it extends arguments about the reconfiguration of power between coloniser and colonised through the extension of state science by analysing the gendered dimensions of colonial agricultural discourses.
