Underneath the Toxic Cloud: An ethnographic exploration of initiatives in the IJmond addressing pollution by Tata Steel

Abstract

This thesis is an ethnographic exploration of initiatives in the IJmond-region, the Netherlands, that engaged with industrial pollution caused by steel company Tata Steel. This exploration is based on three months of anthropological fieldwork in the IJmond, the region that surrounds Tata Steel IJmuiden. Through description of these initiatives’ practices, such as documenting facts regarding this pollution, measuring or monitoring it, and organising events and protests regarding it, I analyse how people in these initiatives exercised a form of scientific citizenship. I do this by describing how these people gained expertise on Tata Steel’s pollution, and how my interlocutors lost trust in Tata Steel and the government as a result of their manipulation and ignoring people’s complaints. Finally, I analyse the role of time in these initiatives’ actions against the pollution, describing how both Tata Steel and the initiatives utilised time to their advantage. Through this, I provide an account of how initiatives in the IJmond addressed Tata Steel’s pollution, and what difficulties they faced while doing this.