Vanesa Castán Broto

Stigma and Attachment: Performance of Identity in an Environmentally Degraded Place

Research examining the relationship between place and identity shows that the experience of places influences a persons process of identification, through which an emotional bond with the place may be developed. However, the implications of this literature for land restoration remain unexplored. This is partially due to a gap in empirical research that explores the performance of identities in environmentally degraded settings. This article examines the relationship between identity and place among residents living around five coal ash disposal sites in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The article develops a qualitative model to understand the emergence of divergent responses toward the pollution and illustrates that in an environmentally degraded setting the bonds between the individuals and the place are not necessarily dislocated; in some cases, these bonds may be even reinforced by the performance of adaptative identities in response to environmental change.

Coal ash and risk: Four social interpretations of a pollution landscape

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to examine how cultural and natural components of landscapes interact in the context of environmental change. The paper looks at an example of a ‘pollution landscape’ through the lens of four distinct perspectives on the relationship between landscapes and society derived from the literature. The aim is both to develop a holistic understanding of the interaction of landscape and society in the case study and to explore the insights and limitations of each perspective. The case study explored in this paper concerns coal ash pollution in the city of Tuzla in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Environmental changes due to coal ash pollution in Tuzla have compromised the capacity of the landscape to provide societal needs and generated new meanings associated with the landscape. The case study shows that landscape influences local perceptions of environmental risks and as a result, local inhabitants develop risk management strategies dwelling in a pollution landscape. The paper concludes that the relationship between landscapes and societies may be understood best as an interactive complex, examining the actions performed in and by landscapes.

The governance of coal ash pollution in post-socialist times: power and expectations

The coal energy sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) represents both a significant economic hope and a considerable environmental threat for the country. One of the major problems of the coal industry is the disposal of large amounts of coal combustion residues. RECOAL was an EU-supported project (2005–7) whose objective was to develop remediation solutions for coal ash disposal (CAD) sites in BiH. Most of RECOALs environmental fieldwork was based around TEP in the municipality of Tuzla, one of the biggest thermo-electric power plants in the country. Qualitative research was carried out to understand the environmental governance structure of the area and inform and test the acceptance of different remediation solutions proposed by RECOAL. Interviews with institutional stakeholders showed a highly complex institutional structure, where government institutions and industry are involved in complicated negotiations about the distribution of the liabilities resulting from TEPs pollution. Interviews among local residents show that locally organised action could help steer the policy-making process towards more sustainable solutions.

Environmental conflicts, research projects and the generation of collective expectations: A case study of a land regeneration project in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Locally based research projects may generate multiple and competing expectations from local actors, particularly when they deal with local issues that are perceived as affecting the local quality of life, such as land regeneration. The sociology of expectations provides an entry point through which the expectations of research projects in the context of an environmental conflict can be investigated. This article analyzes a case study of a project (RECOAL) whose remit was to develop regeneration solutions for coal ash disposal sites in the western Balkans. The sociology of expectations is applied here to explain the linkage between the emergence of political discourses and collective expectations. The analysis suggests that the emergence of collective future orientations of locally based research projects needs to be understood with reference to the specific political positions from which such orientations are expressed. While expectations may shape the political debate, the political debate is also generative of such expectations.

Levels of learning in environmental expertise: From generalism to personally indexed specialisation

The past 15 years in Finland have witnessed a diversification among environmental experts. In addition to engineers and biologists, increasing numbers of environmental scientists – from both the natural and social sciences – have entered the job market. Universities in Finland have tried to respond to this challenge by implementing innovative forms of environmental education. This article inquires into the experiences of Finnish environmental social scientists who have received a form of education that explicitly aims at increasing their capacity to discern social and ecological nuances in environmental issues. These ideas seem to promote a particular form of “practical wisdom” or phronesis. The article analyses a set of interviews with both supporters of, and participating students in, two educational programmes with “phronetic” aims to assess how these new environmental experts define their expertise and professional identities. We claim that students had to learn to frame and contextualise not only complex environmental issues, but also their own abilities and capacities as analysts of such complex issues. The research results are useful for strategic decision-making in both environmental and science policy.