Invisible harms, invisible profits: a theory of the incentive to contaminate

ABSTRACT

Building on ethnographic research conducted in the Ecuadorian Amazon, this paper seeks to reframe the industrial contamination problem. From critiques of neoliberalism to Marxist-oriented environment theories, industrial contamination is understood as a secondary effect of a larger problem of the capitalist system. There are at least four, often overlapping, ways of understanding the pervasiveness of the problem, via: (1) cost-benefit analyses, which determine it to be cheaper to remediate environmental damages than prevent them; (2) weak regulation, which shapes those cost-benefit analyses; (3) the externalisation of certain costs onto third (usually marginalised) parties; and (4) contradictions inherent to capital accumulation which promote the destruction of the very environmental conditions that capital depends on. Curiously, even where contamination is conceptualised as an inherent and necessary feature of capitalism, it appears as collateral damage, as the ‘unintentional by-product’ of something-other, rather than a ‘conscious imposition of “power over”’ a particular group of people (De Angelis, M. 2004. ‘Separating the Doing and the Deed: Capital and the Continuous Character of Enclosures’. Historical Materialism 12:2, 57–87). This is curious because small farmers and indigenous people affected by a devastating oil-related disaster in Ecuador describe contamination otherwise – as a kind of targeted, chemical warfare against those living ‘in the way of’ extractive operations. Dealing with the narrative gap between those lived experiences of contamination and the expert discourses about it, this paper introduces the concept of an ‘incentive to contaminate’. By critically expanding the prevailing theories, the concept turns greater attention to the productive work that contamination does for the oil industry, thus challenging socio-legal categories of intent that impede environmental justice.

Acknowledgements

I want to express my deepest gratitude to Donna Goldstein for her critical reading and superb editorial guidance, as well as to all the ‘interlocutors’ in Ecuador and beyond who have participated in this project. I am additionally grateful for the insightful help I received from João Biehl, Carol Greenhouse, Carolyn Rouse, Elizabeth Davis, Rena Lederman, Suzana Sawyer, David Harvey, Gordon Roecker, Magda Stawkowski, George Byrne, Molly Mullin, Meryleen Mena, Casey Box, José Proaño, Yury Guerra, Ivette Vallejo, Barnaby Ruhe, Byron Jiménez Ponce, Amelia Fiske, Sarah-Jane Koulen, Brandon Hunter and the article’s anonymous reviewers. Finally, I am very grateful for the tremendous support I have received from Princeton University Graduate School, Princeton University's Anthropology Department (especially from Carol Zanca), and CU-Boulder's Anthropology Department.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Lindsay Ofrias is a PhD candidate in anthropology and a recipient of the Lassen Fellowship in Latin American Studies at Princeton University. Her research focuses on environmental justice, petro-politics and social movements.

Notes

1 Texaco and Chevron merged in 2001.

2 The ICC responded to such concerns with a September 2016 announcement that it would begin to give special consideration to prosecuting crimes of an environmental nature, not necessarily in the wartime context (ICC-OTP 2016). While this change may help the Ecuadorians in their ongoing fight for environmental justice, the phenomenon of environmental crime remains highly contentious as a legal category. Discerning the line between negligence and wanton disregard for life is in few other occasions so difficult an endeavor, particularly given that many environmental harms are not currently framed in business and trade contracts as criminal.

Additional information

Funding

This research received financial support from The Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences Graduate Student Fellow Award, CU-Boulder Gallatin Dean’s Award for Graduating Seniors from New York University; the Department of Anthropology, Princeton University, the CARTSS Fellow Award, and the Eaton Graduate Student Travel Award from the University of Colorado-Boulder; and the Lassen Fellowship in Latin American Studies, Princeton University, the Program in Canadian Studies research award, and PIIRS and PLAS summer funding from Princeton University.