Résistance aux grands projets et émergence d’un capital politique, le cas des déchets

Among contemporary environmental conflicts, those associated with waste are the most virulent as they arouse four types of simultaneous feelings among local actors: injustice, fear, mistrust, disgust. The announcement of the creation of a waste management facility on a territory then gives rise to s...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Léa Sébastien
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Université de Reims Champagne-Ardennes 2018-06-01
Series:L'Espace Politique
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Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/espacepolitique/4774
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Summary:Among contemporary environmental conflicts, those associated with waste are the most virulent as they arouse four types of simultaneous feelings among local actors: injustice, fear, mistrust, disgust. The announcement of the creation of a waste management facility on a territory then gives rise to strong opposition movements associated with the NIMBY phenomenon by industry, the media and part of the scientific community, presented as favoring individual interests against common good. However, is the story always so simple? Our case study is a landfill project in the village of St-Escobille, Essonne. From the analysis of the construction, the organization and the evolution of the opposition movement, we test the hypothesis that resistance to waste infrastructures can develop among opponents a political capital. We argue that it is the interweaving of the four feelings and their evolution throughout time that allow the movement to go beyond NIMBY towards what we call "enlightened resistance". Our results show that mistrust transforms into social capital; fear into cognitive capital; disgust into affective capital and injustice into political capital. Some local disputes, especially on the issue of waste, make it possible to enrich democracy by endowing it with new values and questioning the notion of general interest.
ISSN:1958-5500