Laboreal (Dec 2010)
Pão e veneno. Reflexões para uma investigação sobre o “ambientalismo do trabalho” em Itália, 1968-1998
Abstract
This article presents a preliminary reflection for conducting historical research on an item which has so far been little considered in the study of the Italian environmental movement: what I will call "labour environmentalism", that is the struggle for health in the work and living environment of the working class. The story told in this article starts with the meeting between a group of “specialists” in occupational hygiene and a group of workers, which took place in theheart of the Italian industrial triangle between 1960 and 1970. This meeting led to new forms of environmental awareness and political action that I will designate as "labor environmentalism". Then the story moves to an area of petrochemical industry in southern Italy between the 1970s and the 1990s, where the contradictions of the relationship between work, health and the environment exploded and were reconfigured in different ways. My intention with this article is to suggest a new vision of these struggles, inspired by a recent historical literature about industrial hazard.
