Criminally Corrosive: State Corporate Environmental Crime in a South Asheville Community

• In Event: Roundtable: White Collar and Corporate Crime

Abstract

Social life in late modernity is plagued by toxic contamination, and ecological disorganization as the by-product of natural resource extraction and industrial pollution. As a result, entire communities find themselves struggling with the effects of such contamination for decades. Here, I combine approaches from literature on contaminated communities, state-corporate crime, and green criminology to conduct a pilot study into a case of chronic toxic contamination in a community. I use qualitative methods to analyze data from multiple sources related to the case. Through this pilot approach I engage with theoretical propositions by scholars of state-corporate crime, and discuss multiple instances of state-corporate crime throughout the three decades of the community’s struggle with the looming threat of toxic contamination. I find that there may be need for further integration of literature on grassroots social movements as a form of social control at the organizational level, and I question the simple dichotomous typology of state-initiated and state-facilitated state-corporate crime.

Author

• Nicholas J. Membrez-Weiler, North Carolina State University