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Against sacrifice zones
Capitalism produces distinct and highly uneven geographies of extraction, production, development, and waste, with profound implications for social and environmental well-being. Activists, journalists, and academics condemn these dynamics through the strategic mobilization of vivid terminology, such as ‘slow violence’ and ‘frontline community’ that highlight the unique vulnerabilities that impacted communities face. Within this practice, describing heavily polluted areas as ‘sacrifice zones’ has become commonplace in recent decades, as diverse groups resist their unwitting exposure to destructive and toxic industrial, municipal, and military activities. However, pollutants tend to seep, spill, leak, and drift from wherever they are concentrated. This work considers various cases of fugitive pollution to interrogate the assumptions of relative containment and [in]security that ‘sacrifice zone’ implies. Although we are sympathetic to the concept’s political power and affective appeal, we conclude that its reliance on shaky notions of spatial fixity, boundaries, and protection undermines the project of supplanting colonial racial capitalism with convivial socio-ecological relations.
Kimberley Thomas is an Associate Professor and Graduate Chair in the Department of Geography, Environment and Urban Studies and Director of the Climate Justice Field School at Temple University. Her research on environmental justice and agrarian change in the Mekong and Ganges Deltas examines the political economy of climate adaptation, the relational production of security and insecurity, and the vulnerabilizing effects of infrastructure at multiple scales. This work has been supported through funding from the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, and the Institute for Human Geography, and has appeared in a range of journal outlets, including Global Environmental Change, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Political Geography, Development and Change, and WiRES Climate Change.
