Dr Marília Denardin Budó | Racializing the powerful: counter-colonial perspectives on asbestos state-corporate harms and justice

Date and Time: Fr, 24 January 2025, 12 pm
Location: Villa Köstlin, course room (Rümelinstr. 27, 72070 Tübingen)

In this lunch talk, I will present ongoing research that examines the global asbestos industry from the 19th century to the present through the lens of state-corporate harm, written from Brazil's perspective—where asbestos mining continues today. Drawing on decolonial studies, critical criminology, and intersectional theory from the periphery of capitalism, the work analyzes how white supremacy, patriarchy, and colonial rationality enabled the industry's expansion while concealing its lethal impacts. The analysis begins by contextualizing asbestos within the Industrial Revolution, showing how its mining exploitation relied on colonial trade routes and racialized super-exploited labour. At the same time, the factories in Europe exploited white women and men. Early medical research on asbestos-related diseases reflected these power structures, focusing primarily on white British workers while overlooking impacts on colonized mining populations. The narrow technical framework for addressing asbestos hazards significantly delayed effective regulation. Through memory – captured by field research in four countries and documental study -, the research explores how disputes over asbestos harms were shaped, how the victims experience it and connect it to the struggle for justice. The industry's persistence despite evidence of harm stems from structures that normalized suffering in certain populations and nature degradation in certain territories. This is evident in the current global landscape, where asbestos, banned in more than 60 countries, continues to be mined in Brazil and exported to other peripheral nations, perpetuating cycles of environmental injustice. The work advances the study of state-corporate crime by revealing how whiteness operates as a structural foundation for the lack of liability within the systems of justice, enabling these harms to persist. Imagination about what justice should be in the asbestos case, dealing with denial and concealment, and dialogues with the many ecological emergencies we face nowadays are also rooted in the same rationality and economic processes.

Scientific description of the workshop

The idea of neighbourhood has been studied from various perspectives including geography (Keller, 1968; Morris & Hess, 1975; Chaskin, 1995), spatial (Suttles, 1972; Galster, 2019), urban planning/designer (Kallus & Law-Yone, 2000; Colquhoun, 1985; Lynch, 1960) and sociology (Hunter, 1974, 1979). A few scholars have also attempted to

integrate social and geographical perspectives to understand the idea of the neighbourhood (Hallman, 1984; Warren, 1981; Downs, 1981). The neighbourhood is not just understood as a territorial boundary but also considered as a series of overlapping social networks (Castells, 1997; Schoenberg, 1979) and their role is to promote a sense of community and social cohesion (Forrest & Kearns, 2001) and a sense of identity (Morrison, 2003). However, the idea of neighbourhood is understudied and less explored from a policing perspective. Find more on CfP here.