Prosperous Pollutants: Bargaining with Risks and Forging Hopes in an Industrial Town in Eastern Serbia

ABSTRACT

The article explores the ‘work of hope’ in relation to air pollution and health hazards in Bor, a polluted copper-processing town in Eastern Serbia. The aim of this paper is to show the mutual imbrication of hope and risk by delineating how hope for a stable personal and communal future was anchored in the polluting company and the toxic substances it produced, which, in various ways, provided a sense of possibility and opportunity. I show how the work of hope demanded simultaneous weighing up, manoeuvring, accepting, and bargaining with risks that became an integral part of the work of hope in a social setting where the double bind of growth versus sustainability was deeply embedded. I argue that together, hope and risk were both framing devices for thinking about and living towards futures in a context of reindustrialisation and recent sudden economic flourishing in this post-socialist town.

KEYWORDS:

• The work of hope
• risk
• double bind
• air pollution
• future

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Stef Jansen, Madeleine Reeves, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Elisabeth Schober, Ståle Knudsen, Jasminka Beba Jovanović, Adam Brisley, Ivan Rajković, Tanja Petrović, Chris Hann, the participants of the panel ‘Economies of Growth or Ecologies of Survival?’ at EASA 2014, Maia Green and the participants of the Social Anthropology postgraduate seminar at the University of Manchester, and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. The author is the receiver of the RAI/Sutasoma Award.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The industrial complex is called Rudarsko topioničarski basen (RTB) Bor [Mining and Smelter Basin Bor].

2. All names of my interlocutors have been changed throughout the text.

3. See, for instance, Alpes (2011), Brown and de Graaf (2013), Han (2011), and Livingston (2009), who suggest a general interplay between hope and risks. For ambivalence and its relationship with futures and hope, see Street (2012) and Reed (2011).

4. I attended all the events that were related, directly or indirectly, to the company mostly as an ‘ordinary’ citizen, where possible. During the fieldwork, the company declined my request to obtain access to the company’s newspaper Kolektiv, which is today a part of the PR office. On many occasions, the PR office maintained control over critical writing about the company and the town that did not align with the company’s vision of itself and the town. The desired focus of the PR office was on optimism, not hopelessness and despair, on renovated façades, not dilapidation, and so on. The Open Door, on which I focus in this paper, was open to all citizens of Bor.

5. Workers’ self-management was based on the idea of transferring management and decision-making over to the workers in the enterprises and to separate state from industry, although this was never completed in practice (Simmie & Dekleva 1991). This was an exceptional socialist principle, which combined a limited market with relative freedoms, such as freedom to travel abroad, and high living standards.

6. In March 2012, the national average monthly salary was 40,562 dinars (approximately £269). An average RTB salary was 60,000 dinars per month (approximately £398) (BETA 2012; FoNet 2012). The salaries were raised to £800 per month and even more for managerial positions.

7. For details on environmental degradation (excluding details on the impact on health) see The Privatisation Agency (2006).

8. The metallurgical facilities of the copper smelter emit large amounts of sulphur dioxide (170,000–2500,000 tonnes per year), around 1000–1300 tonnes of soot and heavy metals, 250–1000 tonnes of arsenic, 100–500 tonnes of lead, 300 tonnes of zinc, and 850–3600 kilos of mercury (Šerbula 2013: 19).

9. The total amount of the loan is approximately 250,000,000 euros (approximately £183,948,750).

10. Approximately £613 or 833 euros.

11. For aspects of waiting, as a result of interaction between the citizens and the state bureaucracy in a heavily polluted environment, see Auyero and Swistun (2009) or Chapter 5 of Auyero (2012).

12. Yearning for ‘normal lives’ in Bor was structured towards the normative ‘good life’ experienced during remembered socialism as it enabled material prosperity, social security, chances for employment, and equal access to the company’s benefits. In contrast to contemporary studies of Serbia that located experiences of ‘the great fall’ (Simić 2010) and ‘suspended normality’ (Jansen 2005) during the 1990s, my material locates a ‘dramatic fall from grace’ (Jansen 2009b: 826) long after Serbia entered the democratic ‘transition’ after 2000.

13. I thank the anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.