Topic: Slow Violence

industrial smoke tower, Slow Violence, Climate Lit

Slow Violence (origin: Rob Nixon)

Slow violence is a term coined by Rob Nixon in Slow Violence and the Environmentalism and of the Poor (Harvard University Press, 2011) to describe the attritional wake of environmental devastation or pollution: its “invisible” and/or “side-effect” forms. In Nixon’s definition, slow violence is “a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all” (2). Slow violence refers to domino-effect consequences of environmental devastation, when one element in the ecosystem is damaged or disrupted, leading to long-lasting disruption in other elements or ecosystems. The connections between the “main” event and its dispersed consequences are not always direct or easily traceable. The perpetrators may not be obvious, but the victims are.

Examples of slow violence include birth defects and other conditions related to toxins released into water and soil after the 1984 failure of Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India; or the unprecedented levels of cancer and respiratory diseases experienced by poor Black residents of Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley”; or the legacy of pollution and demolished environments left to local communities after industry exploits the site and relocates elsewhere, as, say, in the aftermath of the fracking boom in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia.

©2021 ClimateLit (Marek Oziewicz)

Related terms: structural violenceenvironmental racismpollution

Looking for more? Check these resources:

Thom Davies, “Slow violence and toxic geographies: ‘Out of sight’ to whom?” (Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. April 2019. doi:10.1177/2399654419841063)

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