Environmental, health and social disasters provoked by the toxic market of asbestos are intertwined with the politics of silence related to the asbestos lobbies’ policies aimed at denying and minimising the health dangers of asbestos. Moreover, there is a silence surrounding these disasters that is related to the long latency period of asbestos-related diseases (ARDs), often making the history of a person’s exposure to asbestos difficult to retrace. Therefore, asbestos-related (AR) suffering may persist unrecognised and silent for decades. On the contrary, the practices of anti-asbestos activism can be understood as practices aiming at breaking the silence of these disasters. This article is rooted in a multi-sited ethnography begun in 2008 and performed across Italy and Brazil, following the trajectories linking in particular two of the contaminated sites chosen as research contexts and here discussed, Casale Monferrato (Italy) and Osasco (Brazil). I will discuss the different silences I had to face during my fieldwork. Firstly, I will consider the politics of silence of AR disasters with a focus on the strategies of denial orchestrated by asbestos lobbies transnationally. Secondly, I will discuss the practices of anti-asbestos activism as practices addressed to make AR disasters communicable and recognised. Lastly, I will reflect on the silences that I have not been able to break, by which I refer mainly to the impossibility as a researcher who supports and researches the anti-asbestos movement of approaching exposed workers who oppose the prohibition of asbestos in Brazil.

Breaking and Listening to Silences. Asbestos-Related Disasters, Grassroots Activism and Ethnography

Agata Mazzeo
2021

Abstract

Environmental, health and social disasters provoked by the toxic market of asbestos are intertwined with the politics of silence related to the asbestos lobbies’ policies aimed at denying and minimising the health dangers of asbestos. Moreover, there is a silence surrounding these disasters that is related to the long latency period of asbestos-related diseases (ARDs), often making the history of a person’s exposure to asbestos difficult to retrace. Therefore, asbestos-related (AR) suffering may persist unrecognised and silent for decades. On the contrary, the practices of anti-asbestos activism can be understood as practices aiming at breaking the silence of these disasters. This article is rooted in a multi-sited ethnography begun in 2008 and performed across Italy and Brazil, following the trajectories linking in particular two of the contaminated sites chosen as research contexts and here discussed, Casale Monferrato (Italy) and Osasco (Brazil). I will discuss the different silences I had to face during my fieldwork. Firstly, I will consider the politics of silence of AR disasters with a focus on the strategies of denial orchestrated by asbestos lobbies transnationally. Secondly, I will discuss the practices of anti-asbestos activism as practices addressed to make AR disasters communicable and recognised. Lastly, I will reflect on the silences that I have not been able to break, by which I refer mainly to the impossibility as a researcher who supports and researches the anti-asbestos movement of approaching exposed workers who oppose the prohibition of asbestos in Brazil.
2021
Agata Mazzeo
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11585/884676
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