Affective politics of air pollution: atmospheres and activism in the Tel Aviv Metropolitan Region

ABSTRACT

In this article, we present a novel approach to studying how air pollution (AP) shapes environmental activism in urban-metropolitan contexts, drawing on geographies of affect. We focus on how people engage with AP affectively, through bodily, sensory, and emotional experiences, and highlight its powerful yet differential affective capacities to prompt activism. Through qualitative analysis of social media and interviews, we present two ‘scenes’ of AP activism across the Tel Aviv metropolitan region: residents attending to bus emissions in a marginalized inner-city neighborhood and to illegal waste-burnings in the mixed Jewish-Arab metropolitan edges. We offer a fine-grained reading of how affective atmospheres of pollution induce political agency both individually and collectively; and how, through spatially and temporally dynamic relations, they interact with broader political-ecological settings to direct activism in socially inclusionary/exclusionary paths. Our analysis highlights a distinct ‘affective politics’ of AP that differs from established approaches to environmental politics.

KEYWORDS:

• Air pollution
• affect
• affective atmospheres
• affective politics
• environmental activism
• metropolitan regions

Acknowledgments

We thank our interviewees, who shared with us important information alongside their personal affects and emotions regarding pollution. We also thank the two reviewers and editor for their excellent suggestions on how to improve this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/atmosphere

2. See https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution

3. See e.g., https://www.iqair.com/us/world-air-quality-ranking

4. See Appendix 1: List of Interviewees, Facebook Groups, and Grey Literature.

5. Figure 2 was taken from the Levinsky air monitoring station and is dated 01.01.2020.

Figure 2. Drom Tel Aviv B’Kriz Facebook Group post, 18 February 2020.⁵

6. In Hebrew: Drom Tel Aviv B’Kriz, which also translates to South Tel Aviv is Dope Sick. See https://www.facebook.com/groups/1411635305661588/about

7. E.g. High Court of Justice of Israel Appeal 5878/18:

https://law.acri.org.il/he/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/bagatz5878-18-Tel-Aviv-central-bus-station.pdf

8. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1411635305661588/about

9. https://www.facebook.com/clean.air.israel/photos/a.433600223759977/1117185835401409/

See many additional examples: https://www.facebook.com/clean.air.israel/photos/?ref=page_inernal https://www.facebook.com/clean.air.israel/photos/a.433600223759977/1117185835401409/ See many additional examples: https://www.facebook.com/clean.air.israel/photos/?ref=page_internal

10. In Hebrew: Ezrahim L’Ma’an Avir Naki.

11. www.clean-air.org.il

12. E.g. Latour (2004), addressing the affective capacities of noses, notes the split between odors as registered by human bodies and as registered ‘objectively’ by scientific means; Scott (2016) addresses the negotiation between experiential, smell-based knowledge and scientific knowledge, required by authorities to ‘prove’ the existence of pollution.

13. https://www.facebook.com/groups/879666872062921/about

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation [1812/16].