"What Can Manganese Teach Us About Sharks?": Corporate Framing of Environmental Harms as Benefits

• In Event: White Collar and Organized Crime: The Framing and Boundaries of Deviance

Abstract

Excessive pollution of the air, soil, and water has long been normalized as an unfortunate but necessary byproduct of business as usual. Some corporations take such normalizing accounts a step further by reframing harms as benefits to communities. Green cultural criminology makes the case that the etiology of environmental harms warrants a focus on how crime gets constructed through image and text. Using green cultural criminology as a theoretical foundation, I explore the case of manganese air pollution by Eramet Marietta, Inc. in Marietta, Ohio. I employ a critical discourse analysis of Eramet’s website, specifically their construction of a fabled Manganese University, to reveal strategies whereby the company seeks to frame toxic manganese emissions as beneficial to the human body. By exploring this harm-is-benefit framing process, the project allows for a broader understanding of how manganese pollution in Marietta is legitimized and how complaints against Eramet are delegitimized.

Author

• Holly Ningard, University of Tennessee