AbstractThis article discusses the politics of direct action against fossil fuels put forward by climate justice movements, focusing in particular on the tactic of the blockade. Drawing on the conceptual toolkit of urban political ecology, the argument moves from a critique of the consensual regime of climate change governance to highlight conflict and dissent as central forces for the transformation of the socioecological metabolisms structuring the capitalist urbanization of nature—of which fossil fuels constitute the lifeblood. This approach shifts the debate around climate change politics from an issue of technological transition to one of metabolic transformation. On this basis, the article proposes a characterization of direct action against fossil fuels as expressions of metabolic activism: instances of grassroots ecopolitical engagement that aim to break consensus by disrupting capitalist-driven metabolic relations while also experimenting with alternative values, knowledges, spaces, and sociomaterial relations. To ground these reflections, the article offers an account of the Swedish climate justice coalition Fossilgasfällan and its successful three-year campaign, culminating in a blockade to halt the expansion of the gas terminal of Gothenburg port.
This article discusses the politics of "direct- action" against fossil fuels put forward by climate justice movements, focusing in particular on the tactic of the blockade. Drawing on the conceptual toolkit of Urban Political Ecology, the argument moves from a critique of the consensual regime of climate change governance to highlight conflict and dissent as central forces for the transformation of the socio-ecological metabolisms structuring the capitalist urbanization of nature—of which fossil fuels constitute the lifeblood. This approach shifts the debate around climate change politics from an issue of technological transition to one of metabolic transformation. On this basis, the article proposes a characterization of direct-action against fossil fuels as expressions of metabolic activism: instances of grassroots eco-political engagement that aim to break consensus by disrupting capitalist-driven metabolic relations while also experimenting with alternative values, knowledges, spaces, and socio-material relations. To ground these reflections, the article offers an account of the Swedish climate justice coalition Fossilgasfällan and of its successful three-year campaign, culminated in a blockade, to halt the expansion of the gas terminal of Gothenburg port.
In: Political geography: an interdisciplinary journal for all students of political studies with an interest in the geographical and spatial aspects, Volume 67, p. 46-55
In the course of 2000s, the region of Campania in southern Italy and its capital city Naples became global icons of waste mismanagement after the images of piles of rubbish occluding their urban areas hit the headlines. Conventional explanations, in Italy and elsewhere, pointed to administrative failure, cultural backwardness and mafia infiltration as the main causes of waste mishandling. In the same narratives, local people opposing the construction of landfills, incinerators and storage sites were labeled the root of the problem. However, what these explanations could not account for was the persistence, the breadth and the magnitude of social mobilizations around environmental concerns and their engagements with issues beyond the urban trash. With this thesis, I address this gap by unearthing the political, socioecological and cultural dynamics of grassroots environmentalism in Campania. My aim is twofold: on the one hand, to debunk hegemonic narratives of the waste 'crises', alongside certain framings of protests, through an analysis of the political economy and ecology of waste metabolisms and by investigating specific instances of popular environmentalism; on the other hand, to inquire the politics of society-nature relationships that emerges from grassroots environmental organizing so to work out conceptual contributions to political ecology based on a dialogue between activist and academic knowledges.Rooted in previous activist engagement and on ten months of empirical research with the grassroots committees and the Stop Biocide Coalition of Campania, this thesis reconsiders the recent history of the region's urban and toxic waste 'crises' and investigates the emergence, the outcomes and the legacies of grassroots environmentalism from 2000 to 2015. Positioned across the fields of political ecology, anthropology and geography, the research traces the drivers, the historical depth, the spatial and ecological articulations, and the power relations embedded in the Campania's waste metabolisms. Next to clarifying the processes leading to waste occupation, the main contribution is an ethnography of social mobilizations.By focusing on the knowledge generation and on the spatial interventions of the committees and the Coalition, the research explores the bottom-up defense, reimagination and reclamation of territory in the course of environmental conflicts, scrutinizing resistance strategies and meaning-making processes. The overarching question asks how the grassroots environmental movements experienced, contested and counteracted processes of waste accumulation and socio-environmental degradation. In particular, analytical attention is devoted to charting the emergence of alternative imaginaries and practices of socioecological relations with a transformative political scope. Accordingly, the four articles included in the thesis represent three empirically grounded theoretical interventions and one methodological reflection into the concerns of the research.The findings suggest that socio-environmental conflicts such as Campania epitomize a crucial question of our times: the relations between the unequal distribution of power, the physical and cultural survival of social groups, and the maintenance of ecological conditions suitable for life. The grassroots environmental movements of Campania have developed strategies and notions to tackle these issues that I bring to academic scrutiny. By elaborating the concepts of commoning, ecological decolonization and competing territorialisations, I expand and complement the groundwork of activists, establishing links with emerging debates that interrogate the relevance of grassroots environmental mobilizations for projects of broader political emancipation.
Abstract This interview focuses on a spectrum of urgent challenges facing marginalized human and other-than-human communities, including the intersecting crises of global anthropogenic climate disruption and state and institutional racist violence. We discuss and consider the opportunities, limits, and contradictions of pursuing transformative, intersectional political change and scholarship through efforts to bridge community activism and academic labor. We also critically engage questions concerning the role of the state in the context of racial capitalism and the production of environmental and climate injustice, and how grassroots movements have responded to these concerns. Specific movement formations included in this discussion include the Central Coast Climate Justice Network of California, the Movement for Black Lives/Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, and multispecies abolition democracy. The importance of radical, multi-issue politics and cross-movement solidarities is also given serious attention.
AbstractThis article traces the flow of municipal solid waste from southern Italy through a waste‐to‐energy facility and district heating system in Austria, examining the roles that waste's transformation from contaminant to commodity to fuel plays in interconnected, distributed, and contested urbanization processes. It contends that, while metabolic circulation hides socioecological costs in one place to facilitate valorization in another, specific spatial configurations emerge through territorialization—of waste economies, in this case—providing the spatial base to realize metabolic flows and to anchor political narratives. A decisive effect is that certain patterns of urbanization become locked‐in, impeding alternative metabolic transitions and spatial configurations. Attending to the coproduction of three sites—Naples, Italy; Zwentendorf, Austria; and St Pölten, Austria—through the circulation and transformation of waste and energy the article provides an empirical multi‐sited case study of a political ecology of urbanization.
