CfP: In the Shadow of the Petrochemical Smokestack. ChemicalCorridors and Environmental Health
This
conference endeavours to study chemical industries that use fossil fuel
derivatives. It will focus on these industrial activities’ environmental
and health effects on surrounding areas and local
populations. In the 20th century,
petrochemical activities shaped their surrounding areas. Not just
because such facilities required massive ancillary infrastructure
networks to be built, but also because they enabled
the production of new substances requiring coal and oil derivatives. As
soon as petrochemical facilities were brought on stream, their harmful
effects on local communities were perceptible. These industrial
activities were rapidly accused of causing health
problems for workers and neighbouring populations alike. Conflictuality
was generally latent but sometimes broke out in overt violence,
especially when highly visible “industrial spillovers” occurred,
abruptly putting the spotlight on previously-unnoticed
chronic pollution. Up to the present day, this conflictuality can also
be vehemently expressed when deindustrialisation breaks the unspoken
agreement that may have existed between workers and the companies that
paid their wages. When an industrial activity
ends, its ecological and health effects may become apparent, fuelling
the resentment of the affected local populations and giving rise to
activist movements that sometimes draw on revived memories of past
disasters.
Therefore,
surveys of the petrochemical industry’s health consequences help to
reshape social ties in industrial areas. These health surveys respond to
strong social demand from workers and neighbouring
populations exposed to chronic pollution. Production of this knowledge
can be aimed at filling the gaps of scientific knowledge that was not
produced or sounding an alert about the potential pathogenic risk of a
factory when neighbouring populations carry
out a public epidemiological survey, or even instilling doubts about
the effects of certain substances in order to prevent regulations from
being adopted that would restrict companies’ operations. This process is
part of a conflictual context: knowledge is
debated, disputed and subject to controversy.
Public
authorities play an ambiguous role, sometimes regulating industrial
firms, sometimes supporting them. This role is determined by the level
of involvement of various interest groups, along
with the involvement of economic agents in these cases or the existence
of political opportunities (when medical controversies gain sway in the
public debate, when conflicts arise between municipal and national
authorities, etc.). Thus, the government can
facilitate knowledge production in order to make certain cases of
pollution visible and to fight against them. The various scales of
analysis by public authorities may concur or they may disagree. For
example, national public health institutions may issue
conclusions that contradict the findings of surveys commissioned by
municipal authorities. Despite periods of heated controversy, the
attention given to public health issues shows sharp discontinuities in
these industrial areas: conclusions of surveys are
sometimes forgotten for several decades, leading to identical surveys
being repeated. These processes of “active forgetting” contribute to
both ignorance about the industry’s health effects, and a furthering of
local arrangements to ensure that industrial
activity continues despite its harmful effects.
A growing
number of monographs on “chemical corridors” are being published around
the world, investigating what these areas are called locally. Examples
include research on “Cancer Alley” or “Toxic
Corridors” in the US, or on the “Triangolo della morte” on the Sicilian
coast. These terms refer to districts whose industrial purpose began or
was strengthened in the 20th century
during the massive wave of infrastructure
investments that enabled the expansion of the chemicals industry based
on fossil fuel-derived synthesis. Not only did these facilities have an
environmental and health impact; they also created a phenomenon of
dependence that these districts are struggling
to break free from.
However,
comparisons between chemical corridors in Europe, North America and
others regions are few in number. By bringing together studies carried
out on various industrial lands, this conference
aims to lay the groundwork for a comparative history of such areas. By
breaking with historical scholarship that considers increased fossil
energy consumption and local prosperity to be a foregone conclusion,
this conference calls for participants to focus
their narratives of the petrochemicals industry on the health impact of
its activities. As a result, this conference will give special emphasis
to papers that take a fresh look at the history of health surveys in
industrial areas, and to projects that foster
in-depth discussions between researchers in the social sciences and
public health. Three main themes are open for debate:
- The first
theme calls for studying how the petrochemical industry shapes a region’s development, factoring in the conflicts about health-related issues. Due
to the scale of necessary ancillary infrastructure, the presence of a
refinery
in a given area contributes to a reshaping of social ties in the
surrounding cities or urban areas. Chemical activities transform their
host areas by eroding existing arrangements between social groups:
agreements on natural resource management (water, air
and soil) are altered by the industrial presence.. Although industrial
players undertake an array of efforts to make their activities
acceptable to the local population despite their risks (with emphasis on
job creations, the contribution to local tax revenue,
or financial compensation for claimants following instances of
pollution), the land use and health issues are grounds for opposition
from a portion of neighbouring populations and workers. This opposition
probably became the recurring obstacle preventing local
stakeholders from consenting unanimously to the industrial presence.
Conference papers should provide a clearer description of the social
characteristics of the groups involved, and should help define the
boundaries of health issues at the regional level.
The aim will be to understand the resources of the workers (both men
and women) who successfully protested the harmful effects of the
industry that provided their income, and to shed light on the process
through which neighbouring populations grew concerned
when they noted health problems. Special attention is warranted for the
role of these workers’ relatives in bringing visibility to industrial
illnesses. In this regard, it is important to investigate how gender
relationships gave structure to the formulation
of environmental health issues in chemical corridors.
- The second
theme endeavours to specify the timelines
of the process whereby the petrochemical industry’s health and
ecological effects become visible and are managed. This conference,
by breaking with a history of energy techniques (which
tracks the evolution of the corporate strategies of the market
leaders), favours the re-emergence of less linear timelines. Thus,
industrial illnesses and the industry’s ecological consequences often
become visible only with a certain time lag. Light should
be cast on the way that workers and their organisations think about and
handle these deferred effects. How do healthcare professionals deal
with these time lags in carrying out health surveys? To what extent do
these time lags change industrial strategies?
In addition, long-run studies of a chemical corridor will help build a
timeline in order to better grasp successive “industrial risk regimes”,
in other words, the predominant social ties and health risk regulation
systems for a given time and a given place.
- The third
theme aims to better describe the health
knowledge produced, the way that this knowledge serves as a warning
about one or more substances, and how this knowledge is used to
transform industrial risk regulation practices. The
aim will be, on the one hand, to analyse the fields used to produce
knowledge about the health effects of industry. Thus, while industrial
hygiene endeavours to study the effects of substances on the health of a
company’s workers, health surveys carried out
at the local level challenge this separation between occupational
health and general public health. On the other hand, the aim will be to
pick out the differing viewpoints between academic and popular
epidemiology approaches. While the popular epidemiology
approach may seem less robust in terms of the rules of evidence, it
helps to identify epidemic phenomena and to alert researchers who would
otherwise not be aware of these health situations. These two kinds of
epidemiology also question how regulations are
made insofar as academic epidemiology is frequently used by public
authorities to detect clusters of illnesses related to industry, whereas
public epidemiology has the goal of determining precautionary measures
to prevent exposure to substances suspected of
being pathogenic.
Thus, there
is an undeniable diversity of approaches amidst the various
stakeholders: neighbouring populations, academics, local elected
representatives or government agency representatives. The
conference will endeavour to study and compare these approaches in
order to gain a clearer understanding of the slow, winding history of
the health impact of the petrochemical infrastructures that form a
cornerstone for our contemporary lifestyles and consumption
patterns.
Working languages will be English and French.
Paper proposals will include the name of the applicant, a short CV and an abstract of no more than 400 words. The deadline for the submission of paper proposals is 15th May
2019.
Paper proposals have to be sent simultaneously to renaudbecot@gmail.com and s
Applicants will be informed shortly after 15th June 2019. The organizing committee will cover their accommodation during the conference, and applicants could
ask for a cover of reasonable travel costs if required.
Successful applicants will be asked to send a working papers of about 30,000 characters before the 31st October 2019.
Conference supported by the Fondation de France.
Organizing Committee
Renaud Bécot (Post-doctoral researcher, History, LARHRA, Lyon)
Stéphane Frioux (Maître de conférences, History, University Lyon 2 and IUF, LARHRA)
Gwenola Le Naour (Maître de conférences, Political Science, Sciences Po Lyon and Triangle, Lyon)
Vincent Porhel (Maître de conférences, History, University Lyon 1 and LARHRA)
Scientific Committee
- Laura Centemeri (Research Fellow, Sociology, CNRS - CEMS-EHESS Paris)
- Emilie Counil (Research Fellow, Epidemiology, INED - Paris)
- Anne Dalmasso (Professor, History, Université Grenoble Alpes - LARHRA)
- Xavier Daumalin (Professor, History, Université Aix-Marseille - Director of the UMR TELEMME)
- Philippe Davezies (Professor of medicine and occupational health, University Lyon 1)
- Pierre Fournier
(Professor, Sociology, Université d'Aix-Marseille - Director of the
Laboratoire méditerranéen de sociologie, LAMES)
- Julie Henry (Maître de conférences, Philosophy, Ecole Normale Supérieure Lyon – Triangle)
- Anne Marchand (Post-doctoral researcher, Sociology, Université Paris 13)
- Pascal Marichalar (Research Fellow, CNRS - IRIS - Paris)