Sixteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Home to the largest steel mill in Europe, the city of Taranto (Southern Italy) has been struggling with industrial pollution since the early 1960s. Industrial pollution in the city is documented by a growing body of epidemiological evidence that correlates the excess of mortality and morbidity for cancer and cardiovascular pathologies to the high concentrations of pollutants in the districts adjacent to the the industry. With the city under the spotlight of national media and politics, current debates revolve around engineering a sustainable future for the community, but focus almost exclusively on addressing the environmental, public health, and economic dimensions of pollution. Drawing on visual examples from ethnographic fieldwork in a district adjacent to the factory, I argue for the centrality of accounting for the moral and cultural effects of pollution in rethinking sustainable models for communities like Taranto. This study retraces the moral desirability of industrialisation as a symbolic prerequisite for modernity. Industrialisation required Taranto and its people to distance themselves from their shared agricultural past, hence fragmenting their communal identity and enabling them to pursue modern values of self-cultivation and capital accumulation. Said communal fragmentation is also responsible for a desensitisation toward public spaces and environmental issues, as well as an increasing importance attributed to individual wealth and the private dimension of social life. Engineering environmental sustainability in heavily polluted sites like Taranto means to fully acknowledge the transcendentality of pollution and to account for the moral dimension of the community as a parallel space to be reclaimed.