The politicization of the private sphere – or how the “garbage speaks”

Since my project deals with how information about the environment is communicated, and what appropriate activities that are suggested, I have especially noticed a campaign that seems to be spread over Buenos Aires. The whole city is covered in governmental posters that state the people should “play clean – jugá limpia” which is a term used for sports usually, but which here implies that people are requested to leave the garbage for collection on the street between 8 and 9 in the evening. Even if my current project doesn’t deal with the private sphere, I couldn’t help but notice an article the other day that proved to have many relations with my PhD project. The 3rd of April I read in Clarin that the local government has started to go through the household garbage that has been left on the street at hours when they are not expected to. The article tells of a man who found a bright red note on his door stating that they had found bills or envelops with his address on in the garbage bags and thereby been able to figure out that he was the guilty one for leaving garbage at inappropriate hours. This is a very similar story to what has been the case in Sweden, even if there the issue has concerned people who have thrown household garbage in the woods in order not to have to pay for its collection.

According to the article there are 45 inspectors with the task to supervise how people care for their garbage on the streets. The inspectors work for the Urban Hygiene Unit at the City. According to Clarin this specific policy for garbage was accepted in December 2007, and during 2008 the unit received more than 50.000 complaints out of which 87% concerned leaving garbage out of hours. Regular citizens pay a fine for between 50-500 pesos, while companies have to pay between 200-5.000 pesos. The majority of the complaints deal with companies since they are “easier to find”. According to the estimates about 10% of the porteños throw their garbage on the street out of hours.

What is not dealt with is how to reduce the constantly increasing amounts of waste. As long as you throw it away at the right hour, you are doing your civic duty. I cannot help but interpret this whole deal as anything else but a politicization of the private sphere.

Rhetorical strategies and speaking rats

Like many others I believe that the mass media has a major influence on what the public perceive as important issues, like how they conceive of environmental problems for example. Greenpeace is given space in the Argentine newspapers with their spectacular events. The other day I saw a video with one of their campaigns on the newspaper Clarin’s website. The actors were dressed up as rats with furry suits and big teeth, as cockroaches and as flies. They were thanking Macri, the mayor of Buenos Aires, for all the extra garbage. The amount of garbage has been rising constantly, and this is a big issue for a city which has accepted a law called “Basura Cero”, zero garbage, with the number 1854. The garbage is a big issue in environmental terms here in Buenos Aires since it affects the public health and sanitation. Greenpeace claims that the government has failed to accomplish with the goals in the law, with an increase in tons of waste by 14.5% in 2008 compared to 2007, with a total of 1,884,460 tons.

The garbage is sent to the suburbs of Buenos Aires, the “courbano”, and with the new contracts that the private companies have made Greenpeace fears that the ambition to reduce the amount of garbage will not be fulfilled. What Greenpeace then suggests is to form educational campaigns to get people to sort their waste at the source, that is, at home. The garbage which is sent to land filling sites contains toxic substances which will harm water and land of the communities that live close to the land filling sites.

I must say that I am impressed by the PR that Greenpeace works with. Even if some campaigns, like the U.S. Greenpeace commercial where they uses digitally altered footage of the deceased President J.F. Kennedy stating that we need an “energy (r)evolution” to deal with the dangers of global warming, have been severely criticized. However, even if it is possible to agree that environmental organizations perhaps have to adhere to the “truth” and that there is a risk that they gain more criticism than support by employing such a strategy, it is also important to discuss the means and the ends with campaigns like these. Therefore I want to return to Pezzullo who talks about “critical interruptions” (2001) as a “rhetorical strategy” (Depoe & Delicath 2004:7) in environmental justice movements, where the issue of how to raise awareness and political will for the environment is central.

In another article, which is part of an important book that deals with cultural activism called Communication and Public Participation in Environmental Decision Making (2004) Pezzullo brings in the method to organize “negative sightseeing”. As the title indicates the book concerns different forms of public participation, and communication theories are used to discuss the issues. Traditionally public participation operates on a technocratic model of rationality, occurs too late in the decision-making process, or lacks forums for informed dialogue (Depoe & Delicath 2004:2-3). To improve public participation, the authors argue and I completely agree, we have to pay adequate attention to issues of communication. Environmental communication is an emerging research tradition, which explores “strategic symbolic action” (2004:4). “Participants in environmental decision making utilize strategic communication in efforts to set agendas, define problems, and advocate solutions, as well as to cultivate trust.” (ibid:4). Further, as the authors state that Fischer and Forester managed to point out, public participation in environmental decision making is a “constant discursive struggle over the criteria of social classification, the boundaries of problem categories, the intersubjective interpretation of common experiences, the conceptual framing of problems, and the shared meanings which motivate them to act” (1993:1-2 cited in Depoe & Delicath 2004:4-5).

“In addition to writings, speeches, paintings, photographs, and protests, tours have provided a compelling medium of persuasion for environmentalists” Pezzullo writes (2004:235). In her article “Toxic Tours: Communicating the ‘Presence’ of Chemical Contamination” (2004) Pezzullo discusses the use of guided journeys to learn about specific places and their environmental state. What she calls “toxic tours” has the capacity to be a mode of communication, and can be a form of environmental advocacy through the possibility to make the toxicity “present”. It is also (most probably) an experience of something different from ones everyday life, which can serve as a transformative experience. This implies a quest to stimulate a sense of agency among the tour goers that may result in action. Presence in this case “describes when an argument becomes relevant or meaningful to its audience” (Pezzullo 2004:245). It is further through the “ways in which tourists are guided through these spaces physically and orally that make toxic tours matter” (ibid:247).

In his article “Art and Advocacy: citizen participation through cultural activism” in the mentioned anthology John Delicath (2004) explores the role that cultural activism and photography play in environmental justice struggles. He argues that theorists that deal with participation have to consider the issues of what motivates, inspires, prepares, and empowers the public to participate in environmental decision making. He looks specifically at the role cultural activism plays.

So, from these analytical contributions it is possible to examine the workings of Greenpeace in Argentina. Even if it would be rewarding to compare the activities and campaigns that the international NGO carries out, that is beyond the scope of this present study, and it is only possible to attempt to connect their campaigns to the current political context. In a country where the trust in politicians is very low it is interesting to notice how they blame a specific actor – the mayor Macri.

References:
Depoe, Stephen & John W. Delicath (eds.) (2004) Communication and Public Participation in Environmental Decision Making. State University of New York Press.

Delicath, John (2004) “Art and Advocacy: citizen participation through cultural activism” in Communication and Public Participation in Environmental Decision Making. State University of New York Press.

Pezzullo, Phaedra (2001) “Performing Critical Interruptions: Stories, Rhetorical Intervention, and the Environmental Justice Movement”, Western Journal of Communication 65(1), pp 1-25.

Pezzullo, Phaedra (2004) “Toxic Tours: Communicating the ‘Presence’ of Chemical Contamination”, in Communication and Public Participation in Environmental Decision Making. State University of New York Press.

What are you fighting for?

“There’s only so much protest can accomplish. At a certain point you have to talk about what you’re fighting for” (Naomi Klein in the movie “The Take”)

This is how Naomi Klein argues in the movie The Take, which is about the events that took place in Argentina in relation to the economic and political crisis in December 2001. Leaving these central events aside for later, geographer Carlos Reboratti whom I spoke to recently, argued in a similar manner about the environmental movements in Argentina. If they only say “no” to everything: no to the minas, no to the paper mills, no to genetically modified products, no to soybean production, people will find that the environmental movements are just negative and not suggesting any solutions.

This was further an essential issue yesterday at a meeting for environmental organizations who are planning an event for the Environmental Day on the 5th of June here in Argentina. After having discussed all the problem that exist, and the role of the State in environmental politics, the group of ten activists from different environmental organizations agreed that they had to come up with suggestions, and not just question practices. The matter which was raised then concerned whether to talk about an alternative model to the neoliberal capitalist model, or whether it was more open ended to talk about “alternative suggestions” since there is not just one model, but several different ways to reorganize productive system to become more sustainable.

Among all the problems that the network wants to focus on - and they are the mining business which causes pollution; the present agricultural production containing agrochemicals, mono cultivation and genetically modified products; and public health since many households lack water and sewage systems which lately has caused a dengue epidemic in the country – the network focused on international conventions that Argentina has signed, but not yet incorporated in national law, or failure to observe the law. The Stockholm Convention was mentioned.

At the next meeting the network will discuss what possible activities that can be carried out at the event in June, and I can’t wait to learn about their ideas! An interesting point of departure for analysing this is that since I was the first to arrive at the meeting yesterday I had time for a little chat with one of the organizers, and his response to my description of my study was that “we are working with many international organisations, and very often they suggest activities that are far from adapted to the Argentine situation”. Now I have to learn more about what these organisations find as adapted activities.