Storied experiences of the Havelock North drinking water crisis: A case for a ‘narrative green victimology’
| Author | Sarah Monod de Froideville |
| DOI | 10.1177/02697580211005013 |
| Published date | 01 May 2022 |
| Date | 01 May 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International Review of Victimology
2022, Vol. 28(2) 235 –254
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/02697580211005013
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Article
Storied experiences
of the Havelock North
drinking water crisis:
A case for a ‘narrative
green victimology’
Sarah Monod de Froideville
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Abstract
The number of victims from environmental harm far exceeds that from everyday property and
interpersonal crime, yet little is known about the experience of environmental victimisation. This
paper makes a case for a narrative green victimology to advance scholarship about environmental
victims, drawing on data from interviews with persons affected by a waterborne outbreak of
campylobacter in the small town of Havelock North, New Zealand, in August 2016. Findings
demonstrate that understandings of environmental harm are developed in narratives, with nar-
ratives. In particular, participants’ stories of harm and victimisation revealed fragments of larger,
cultural narratives about sacrifice, nation-building, motherhood, and environmental purity, each of
which affected their understanding of the impact of the outbreak on their autonomy as agentive
persons. It is proposed that a narrative green victimology offers environmental victimology a
platform upon which it can foot its frameworks.
Keywords
Environmental victims, narrative victimology, cultural narratives, drinking water, Havelock North
Introduction
At the nucleus of green criminology is its victimology. Given the lack of clear limits about
environmental harm in criminal, civil and rights discourses, it would be near impossible to make
claims about injurious activity without a human, non-human animal or ecological victim (or
Corresponding author:
Sarah Monod de Froideville, Institute of Criminology, Level 9, Murphy Building, Kelburn Campu s, Victoria University
of Wellington, 6011, Wellington, New Zealand.
Email: sarah.monoddefroideville@vuw.ac.nz
236 International Review of Victimology 28(2)
victims). Yet intellectual inquiry in to environmental victimology has bee n slow to develop a
coherent centre (Hall, 2013, 2014, 20 18; Natali, 2015, 2017; Pemberton, 20 17; White, 2018;
Williams, 1996a, 1996b). Part of the problem is that potential victims are socialised to imagine
Earth as a ‘resource’ (Lynch and Stretesky, 2018), and so their encounters with instances of harm
are likely to go unnoticed. Scholars also disagree about the nature of environmental victimisation
and what avenue is best for responding to those who have been victimised. Compounding these
issues is a lack of empirical data that documents how victims understand their experiences of harm
(Hall, 2013, 2018; Pemberton, 2017; Walklate, 2017; White, 2014).
This paper makes a case for a narrative green victimology to advance scholarship about envi-
ronmental victims, drawing from interviews with persons affected by a waterborne outbreak of
campylobacter in the small town of Havelock North, New Zealand (NZ), in August 2016. The
paper explores how interviewees made sense of becoming ill from contaminated water (or caring
for an ill person), in addition to their engagement with a victim identity. The data demonstrate
Pemberton’s (2017) claim that understandings of environmental harm are developed in narratives,
and reveal that such narratives are infused with narratives drawn from elsewhere. I will illustrate
how participants’ stories about what they endured and witnessed were peppered with fragments of
larger, cultural narratives about sacrifice, nation-building, motherhood, and environmental purity.
The paper proceeds in the following order. First, the discussion explores the developments in
environmental victimology so far and introduces a narrative green victimology. Second, the
methods used to gather the empirical data are described and participants’ accounts of the events
are traced. Third, I describe and consider their varied engagements with a sense of victimhood,
noting the operation of cultural narratives that were littered amongst their accounts. I then bring the
paper to a close by considering the potential of a narrative approach for green victimology.
Environmental victimisation
Victimisation from environmental harm far exceeds that from everyday property and interpersonal
crime (Spapens, 2014). Statistics fo r pollution harms, for example, are ma rkedly higher than
violent interpersonal acts, whichever study one draws on. Pollution is responsible for 15 times
more deaths than wars and all other forms of violence (Landrigan et al., 2018). In 2015 the global
number of deaths from total pollution (air, water and soil) was 23 times higher than the number of
deaths from interpersonal violence (war and homicide) (Brink, 2017). United States residents are
35,000 times more likely to be exposed to water pollution than they are to encounter an act of street
violence (Lynch and Stretesky, 2018). More harrowing is the fact that these figures barely scratch
the surface of suffering from environmental harm endured under the Anthropocene. Why, then, is
more not made of it?
For Skinnider (2012), it is the failure of environmental harm to evoke the kind of moral
repugnance that interpersonal crime does that explains the gulf between harms from issues such
as water pollution and their recognition (see also Pemberton, 2017). Our speciesism makes it
difficult to imagine that monkeys, mice or mosquitos might have a right to a place in the world
just as we do. As Flynn and Hall (2017) note, many animals meet all the criteria for Christie’s
(1986) ‘ideal victim’, and yet it takes a rare occasion, such as the recent bushfires in Australia, that
will make us pay attention to their suffering. Similarly, our Westernism makes it hard to imagine
mountains and trees as grandparents and wise elders as they are in many indigenous cultures. Time
is also an enemy insofar as it introduces doubt to the question of responsibility. As Natali (2017)
illustrates in the example of historical pollution, is the original polluter the problem maker? Or the
2International Review of Victimology XX(X)
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