A framework for a critical physical geography of ‘sacrifice zones’: Physical landscapes and discursive spaces of frac sand mining in western Wisconsin

Abstract

The term sacrifice zone has been applied within activism, journalism, and scholarship to a wide range of polluted and degraded areas, including places playing host to relatively new extractive activities. This article proposes a conceptual framework for analyzing the phenomenon of the sacrifice zone within the emerging research paradigm of critical physical geography, using the illustrative case of frac sand mining in western Wisconsin, USA. In this case, we find that the meanings of sacrifice and the sacrifice zone vary along two major dimensions—the object of sacrifice and the initiator of sacrifice—and we propose that future research should attend to relationships between these dimensions and the efficacy of the framing for influencing future landscape change. We also argue that analyses in critical physical geography require investigating how in controversial situations some physical geographic (and human geographic) explanations and accounts stabilize as “matters of fact” and others emerge as disputed “matters of concern.” The latter, we contend, generate the conditions that lend themselves to the “sacrifice zone” frame. We suggest that this distinction both complicates and enriches efforts to integrate social and biophysical explanations.