A perfect storm: embodied workers, emplaced corporations, and delayed reflexivity in a Canadian 'Risk Society'

Deborah Jackson

doi:10.2458/v27i1.23138

Abstract

At the turn of the 21st century, an occupational disease epidemic began to unfold in Sarnia, Ontario, home to the petrochemical complex known as Canada's 'Chemical Valley.' Given the long latency periods for these diseases, the hazardous exposures that produced them would have occurred over a period of decades during the latter 20th century. This suggests a paradox: what accounts for unionized Canadian men working for decades in conditions that posed such grave risks to their health? Or, put in terms of Ulrich Beck's compelling and influential model: given that Chemical Valley during the second half of the 20th century constituted a quintessential "risk society" of the modern West, where were the forces of "political reflexivity" – resistance leading to change – typically provoked by the excesses of such societies? In this article, I seek to resolve this paradox with a political ecology approach that focuses on workers' embodied experience in the micro-environment of their workplace and community, as well as on the material and social emplacement of petrochemical facilities in the region. The analysis reveals a 'perfect storm' of converging ecological, cultural, political, and economic conditions that allowed local corporations to achieve extraordinary power. Consequently, even as activism for occupational and environmental justice was effecting change in similar industrial centers throughout Ontario and the Great Lakes region, these changes failed to take hold in Chemical Valley. The article concludes by suggesting that those 20th century power dynamics have continued into the 21st century, where reflexivity delayed might well have atrophied into reflexivity denied.Keywords: embodiment, emplacement, risk society, petrochemical corporations, industrial workers, Canada, Great Lakes region

Highlights

Lambton County in Southwestern Ontario comprises fields and farmlands, villages and towns, the city of Sarnia, and one of the heaviest concentrations of petrochemical plants in Canada
Petrochemical facilities began locating there in the early 1940s, and by the early 1960s prominent political and business leaders informally dubbed this industrial complex 'Chemical Valley'; the moniker caught on, evoking local pride in the innovative products developed there, as well as in the economic prosperity these new industries brought to the region
The result: despite the fact that forces of social and political change – the political reflexivity predicted by Beck – were occurring elsewhere in Ontario and throughout the Great Lakes region, the risk industries of Chemical Valley were able to thwart such efforts in Sarnia-Lambton and continue their harmful practices virtually unopposed

Summary

Introduction

Lambton County in Southwestern Ontario comprises fields and farmlands, villages and towns, the city of Sarnia, and one of the heaviest concentrations of petrochemical plants in Canada. It is striking that this disease has been reported to occur among Lambton County workers at a rate four times that of the rest of Ontario combined (Payne and Pichora 2009), raising questions about asbestos exposures, and about working conditions more generally This occupational health crisis, provides a salient and poignant connection between the present and the past, as the afflicted workers literally carry within their bodies toxic substances from exposures on the shop-floors of decades ago. I consider the larger political economic context of the period that shaped and constrained workers' experience, with an emphasis on the deep emplacement of petrochemical corporations in the local ecology and community These conditions converged in a perfect storm that, I argue, allowed local corporations to wield extraordinary power, including control over their representation in the regional media. The result: despite the fact that forces of social and political change – the political reflexivity predicted by Beck – were occurring elsewhere in Ontario and throughout the Great Lakes region, the risk industries of Chemical Valley were able to thwart such efforts in Sarnia-Lambton and continue their harmful practices virtually unopposed

Theories and methods: a political ecology approach

Sensory encounters with shop-floor hazards

Affective encounters on the shop floor and beyond

Emplaced corporate power by and through the Observer newspaper

Conclusion: reflexivity denied?