Unseen Suffering: Slow Violence, Consumer Activism, and Environmental Injustice

• In Event: 106 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 01. Consumer Activism and the Corporation

Abstract

In this paper I compare early consumer activism and environmental justice activism in light of the formal characteristics of the problems that they addressed. Typically, social movement scholars investigate how framing strategies shape and define the problems that they address. It is my goal to return attention to the ways in which problems shape or relate to framing strategies. Drawing on the notion of “slow violence” – difficult to apprehend suffering that does not obey temporal or spatial borders and that disproportionately affects marginalized people – I discuss the turn-of-the-twentieth-century consumer activism and late twentieth century environmental justice activism. Despite the profound differences in social and historical context, I draw on historical materials to illustrate the subtle ways that the problem of slow violence structured their activism. This research promises to bring the role of social problems under renewed scrutiny for the study of social movements. In addition, I illustrate how the notion of slow violence reveals unappreciated environmental dimensions of early consumer activism.

Author

• Tad P. Skotnicki, University of North Carolina, Greensboro