A sensory and visual approach for comprehending environmental victimization by the asbestos industry in Casale Monferrato
| Date | 01 November 2019 |
| Published date | 01 November 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370818788012 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370818788012
European Journal of Criminology
2019, Vol. 16(6) 708 –727
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370818788012
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A sensory and visual
approach for comprehending
environmental victimization
by the asbestos industry in
Casale Monferrato
Lorenzo Natali
University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
Marília de Nardin Budó
Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), Brazil
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.
Keywords
Asbestos, Casale Monferrato, environmental victimization, green criminology, visual
methodologies
Introduction
For more than 20 years, criminology has turned its attention to environmental risks, harms
and disasters – a perspective known as ‘green criminology’ (Lynch, 1990; South, 1998;
Corresponding author:
Lorenzo Natali, Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Milano-Bicocca,
Via Bicocca degli Arcimboldi, 8 – 20126 Milan, Italy.
Email: lorenzo.natali1@unimib.it
788012EUC0010.1177/1477370818788012European Journal of CriminologyNatali and de Nardin Budó
research-article2018
Article
Natali and de Nardin Budó 709
South et al., 2013).1 Starting from this theoretical background, this contribution proposes
a pilot study which explores and maps the social imaginary surrounding environmental
crimes and their perceptions. Through a case-study – Casale Monferrato (Italy) – the fol-
lowing question will be explored: In what way can the methodological tool called ‘itiner-
ant soliloquy’ make it possible to examine the various forms in which environmental
victimization is perceived by people who live in polluted environments? This technique
of qualitative investigation is proposed as a particular way to investigate these complex
dimensions, as we will describe and discuss after the exposition of our theoretical back-
grounds: green criminology and visual methodologies.
Green criminology and visual research methods
Green criminology represents a ‘conceptual umbrella’ within whose analytical frame the
bio-physical and socio-economic consequences of the various sources of environmental
harm – such as pollution, depletion of resources, loss of bio-diversity, climate change
(South et al., 2013: 28) – can be encompassed and examined from multiple perspectives.
Against this wide horizon, green criminology seems able to promote new ways of seeing,
feeling, sensing and narrating the complex relationship between humans and environ-
ment (see also Berger, 2008 [1972]; Degen and Rose, 2012; Peyrefitte, 2012). It inaugu-
rates a ‘green eye’, able to expand the criminological imagination about environmental
crimes beyond the mainstream paradigms (White, 2003; Natali, 2016c).
This ‘green eye’ also provides another important point of confluence for a critical
approach in criminology: in particular, the transition between micro and macro levels of
analysis, from life experience in a local point of view, to a wide perception about the
global economic structure in neoliberal capitalism (see also Lynch and Stretesky, 2014).
It is widely recognized that transnational corporations, because of the ‘rationality’ behind
them (Pearce, 1993), produce the most hideous harms and seldom are held accountable
for their crimes (Tombs and Whyte, 2015). The effortless ways in which these organiza-
tions migrate from Global North to Global South, exploiting workers in poorer and less
protected countries, polluting the water, the air and the land, have been denounced in
much research (Böhm, 2016; Lynch and Stretesky, 2001; Ruggiero and South, 2013;
Walters, 2009). As Pearce and Tombs (1998) note, these phenomena are not only the col-
lateral effects of ‘toxic capitalism’, but also the fulfilment of the unlimited desires for
profit imprinted in its ‘DNA’. In this context, it is of paramount importance to study the
role that the movements of victims play in the context of disputes for truth and justice
around the experience of victimization, resisting the industry propaganda to get some
compensation (Castleman and Tweedale, 2012).
Diane Heckenberg and Rob White (2013: 96–8) highlight the relevance of carrying
out empirical investigations in the field of green criminology, capable of considering the
multiple ‘discourses’, such as legal and regulatory, scientific, popular, of the victims, of
the mass media (see also White, 2011: 119). Although little explored (Hall, 2013), the
study of victims’ narratives brings the opportunity to comprehend the nature of victimi-
zation as an active social process, implying relationships of power, domination and
resistance, both at a local and at a global level (White, 2011: 106). Along with other
scholars (Jarrell et al., 2013; Jarrell and Ozymy, 2014), we focus on the importance of
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