On the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina, there is a shantytown called Villa Inflamable that is home to many people and a variety of large companies. This community and its relationships with its environment, local companies, and local governments are examined in the ethnography Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown by Javier Auyero and Débora Alejandra Swistun. Auyero, an American professor of sociology, and Swistun, an anthropologist and native of Flammable, used two and a half years of field work to compile a comprehensive view of the historical and current, polluted state of the community. Throughout the book, the authors examine the effects of high levels of pollution on the inhabitants of Flammable and their ability to act on their own behalf. Auyero and Swistun view the neighborhood as a “potential site of collective mobilization against environmental suffering” because the area is clearly polluted and companies in the area may be to blame. In reality, however, the inhabitants of Flammable are dominated by the structures around them. Although they display certain methods of agency, the structural domination dictates how they act and how they view their own surroundings and community.
To help place the people of Flammable on the spectrum from agency, direct agency—individuals working to make their situations better themselves—needs to be considered. Auyero and Swistun notice that the inhabitants of Flammable have acted as agents to attempt to better their situation in a case involving the installation of high-voltage wires directly over the homes of some residents. The residents of these homes, and others, were concerned that the “electromagnetic field generated by the wires [would give] t...
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...n afford the testing for lead poisoning, many do not receive the test for fear of losing that support. The power and influence of Shell within the community discourages people from acting as agents for fear that Shell will either stop employing their families or stop providing medical care and other forms of aid.
The people of Flammable have limited agency within their community due to a variety of influences. Despite the possibility for direct agency when faced with an abrupt environment change, the use of indirect agents and the dominance of structures point to the residents’ dependence on external aid.
Works Cited
Auyero, Javier and Débora Alejandra Swistun. Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
"Symbolic Power/Symbolic Violence." In Key Concepts in Critical Social Theory. London: Sage UK, 2005.
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