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© 2005 The Edwardsville Journal of
Sociology
A Culture of Polluters:
Globalization and Environmental Crime
Lisa Martino-Taylor
Their power is huge, and their
rights typically supercede the rights of individuals in society. Multinational
corporations intentionally release 3.5 billion pounds of industrial toxins, and
1 to 2 billion pounds of pesticides every year in the
Many questions might arise in a discussion of exposure to industrial toxins. What type of atmosphere creates a situation whereby corporations knowingly pollute? What might lead a corporation to act in such a deviant manner toward society? Sociological resources are scant in looking at this type of corporate deviance.The number of studies regarding corporate transgressions in general is relatively low, and most resources are limited to “published secondary sources” (Bandura, 2000: 57). This paper examines, in general, the unequal power struggle between multi-national corporate polluters and those communities most affected by their practices. Specifically, I address the strategies which enable corporations to rise to the level of power allowing them to pollute with little or no repercussion or resistance, the elements which contribute to corporate deviance and thus environmental crime, and the tools used by such companies to avoid accountability.
The article How Rome Polluted
the World outlines how ancient Romans contaminated the air, water, and land
through toxic industrial processes. Author David Keys (2003: 45) suggests
“hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people living in
THE RISE OF INDUSTRIAL POWER
After the
Civil War, railroads became the first powerful industry in the
As standardization and mass production began to re-organize work, there occurred a deterioration in working conditions. “The massive industrialization that transformed the cities of the nation created a heightened awareness of the dangers of the new society that was increasingly seen as threatening and dangerous” (Markowitz, 2002: 301). By the 1920’s, “the glimmerings of a massive crisis for industry could be discerned by the fact that workers themselves were beginning to bring cases of disease to the courts in the form of liability suits” which soon “reached epidemic proportions” (Rosner and Markowitz, 1991: 66). The National Safety Council (a private organization) produced an independent report which revealed that safety standards were rarely met and predisposed workers “in a high degree” to sickness. Ultimately, industry suppressed the report. “The final resolution of this confrontation reflects the enormous influence that private industry had on ostensibly objective scientific research as early as the 1930’s” (Rosner and Markowitz, 1991: 69). This action previewed what would later become a powerful corporate tactic to address public relations problems related to corporate pollution and chronic industrial illness.
The Stock Market Crash and Great Depression were catalysts for discussion on social responsibility and industrial disease, which emerged “as a highly politicized issue; for upon this seemingly academic debate would hinge the economic survival of families” (Rosner, 2000: 76). As greater numbers of workers turned to the courts for redress, their individual suffering evolved into a national crisis. Courts, labor unions, and even the insurance industry became embroiled in the battle. A mutual agreement to establish a workers’ compensation system whereby workers gave up their right to civil remedy in exchange for no fault compensation became established. This system “further undermined popular understanding of workplace injuries as a responsibility of employers by establishing a no-fault system, in which culpability for an accident was no longer an issue” (Rosner, 2000: 538). Rather than looking at the specific actors and acts as they were related to industrial injury and death (and thus enhancing the ability to remedy such actions), attention shifted, allowing corporations with bad records to escape scrutiny and accountability on a massive scale. In addition, the new system removed “the issue of accidents from the courts and therefore from public view” (Rosner, 2000: 541). Nevertheless, corporations began looking for more lucrative places to do business – where cheap labor was rife, environmental and labor laws were non-existent, or where communities did not have the collective strength to fight powerful polluters.
Erich Goode (2005: 356) describes corporate crime whereby executives and officers engage in illegal actions intend “to further the interests of that corporation” – actions which thereby become ”actions taken on behalf of the corporation” (emphasis added). Because individuals in an organization act within a corporate social structure, often the organization and/or industry climate plays a role in whether an actor commits a crime on behalf of the organization. But if corporate culture secretly rewards such behavior, is that behavior actually deviant? Goode (2005) posits that corporate crime is a form of deviant behavior when actions include the harm of people, sanctions against the actor and/or company, and the discrediting of the corporate actor. In sum, corporate crime is “an important form of organizational deviance” (Goode, 2005: 375).
JUSTIFICATION OF CORPORATE WRONG-DOING
Some scholars posit that deliberate decision-making is the cause of corporate crime and deviance. “Corporate crime and violence are often the result of calculated, rational discussions made by people who clearly would be deterred by stronger penalties and enforcement” (Nader, 2000). Corporate norms, institutional climate, social control, and the perceived cost/benefits of various solutions can be viewed as contributory elements (Simpson, 2002: 513; Goode, 2005: 354). Of note, “the most striking aspect of corporate transgression is that it is committed not by dangerous, criminally-oriented mavericks but by eminent members of the business community who break the rules ostensibly in the interests of their companies and their own interests” (Bandura, 2000: 57). Whether individual choice or corporate pressure (or both), it is important that research further examine social control from within the organization, which leads to corporate deviance in the form of environmental crime.
CONTRIBUTING FACTORS TO ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME
If a corporate actor’s deviant acts are “successful” (escapes detection and/or punishment), “this adaptation may become normative for others in a similar social context” (Passas, 2000: 19). People do not ordinarily engage in deviant and harmful conduct, however, “until they have justified to themselves the rightness of their actions” in a process of moral justification, whereby “detrimental conduct is made personally and socially acceptable by portraying it in the service of valued social or moral purposes” (Bandura, 2000: 58). Rationalization has also been identified as a license for departure from social rules “as actors convince themselves that in their particular circumstances, an exception is acceptable” (Passas, 2000: 19).
Societal factors also create a climate favorable for international environmental crime. Factors such as differential costs or values, enforcement and regulatory failure, and trends toward trade liberalization and deregulation create a power differential favorable to corporate polluters. As well, the growing involvement of countries in multilateral environmental agreements has contributed to the increasing rates of international environmental crime.
International environmental crime is defined as “the deliberate evasion of environmental laws and regulations by individuals and companies in the pursuit of personal financial benefit, where the impacts are transboundary or global” (Brack, 2004: A80). It is estimated that the economic cost of international environmental crime is between $20 and $40 billion a year. Furthermore, it is highly likely that international environmental crime will “continue to expand in the coming decades” (Brack, 2004: A81). As seen during the Industrialization period in the U.S., Third World countries on the path toward industrialization are beginning to witness a rise in similar industrial health issues of illness, injury, and death. Furthermore, “corporate crime has become more institutionalized, more legitimate, and more intense with the advent of globalization” (Sarangi, 2002: 49). The sophistication of corporate polluters’ strategies have thus evolved to a new standard, far exceeding the ability of individuals and poorer nations to respond effectively. Corporate crime can be viewed as the “flipside of economic growth,” whereby globalization contributes to “global anomie, dysnomie and ultimately economic misconduct by activating the potential of crime through opportunity, motive and weakened social controls” (Passas, 2000: 16, 24). Clearly, an economic advantage exists when corporations move from a First World country to a Third World country, as the cost of labor is cheaper, laws are less stringent and regulated erratically, government corruption is perhaps rampant, and the economic differential between the powerful and the poor in society are greater. As laws in the U.S. become more stringent, American corporations are forced to comply at home. However, “amid promises of cleaning up their act in the Western countries, corporations are rapidly shifting their dirty work to the South where resistance is either weaker or less visible” (Edward, 1999: 173). Large populations “have become more vulnerable to exploitation, criminal victimization, and recruitment in illicit enterprises or rebel and fundamentalists groups[A1],” which make them prime targets for exploitative multi-national corporations with a design to pollute the environment.
Investigating and prosecuting corporate environmental crime in developing countries is extremely challenging and “normative standards and control mechanisms are weak or completely absent exactly where they are needed the most” (Passas, 2000: 17). Third World laws are often no match for multinationals experienced in public relations, political maneuvering and successful exploitation of resources. “Even where environmental laws exist, local police forces are often uneducated about environmental concerns or influenced by corrupt officials” (Schmidt, 2004: A98). Often corporate polluters will incorporate the cost of violation penalties into the cost of doing business, rather than correct the problem (Schmidt, 2004: 102).
Further, financial aid to poor countries has declined and “whatever assistance is offered comes with strings attached, including the reduction of state intervention…these policies further undercut food security, cause poverty and increase economic and power asymmetries” making these populations yet more vulnerable to polluters (Passas, 2000: 23). In the pursuit of a “global economy,” countries have been persuaded or forced to sign agreements which include stipulations such as reduction of governmental intervention in the regulation of business (regardless of any detrimental effect or ill-fit of such a model for that particular country). There is often a negative effect of imposed western agendas through the IMF, World Bank, European Union, etc., who press debt-ridden countries to seek additional loans (to pay off old ones) from banks in industrialized nations. Often attached to the loan are stipulations that Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) be introduced which favor privatization and foreign investment, often at great societal and environmental cost to the country. American officials have encouraged expansion of trade, and exportation of waste to developing countries, which are “vastly underpolluted” per one government official (Passas, 2000: 16). The promises of globalization have indeed fallen short; an abrupt and dramatic shift in political and economic symmetry is the result, yet further opening the floodgates of poor Third World countries to multinational corporations who make it standard practice to pollute at any cost.
Often in developing countries, corporations can run amuck with few restrictions to regulate environmental contamination and the poisoning of people. Furthermore, “under Chapter 11 of NAFTA, corporations can sue nation states whose laws protecting their people and the environment violate corporate free trade rights” (Zepernich, 2004: 4). This clause has been written for and utilized to benefit American corporations in recent years. For example, Bechtel sued the Bolivian government in 2003 for violating the company’s free trade rights to privatize water in Cochabamba, Bolivia, despite the violent protest of local citizens to maintain a clean, safe and affordable public water source. The economically poor Bolivian government can hardly hold its own against the huge multinational conglomerate Bechtel. Situations such as these force financially dependant countries to accept whatever terms such corporations deem suitable to their own needs, including removal of the country’s own natural resources, cavalier environmental dumping and the poisoning of its citizens.
In 1984 more than 8,000 people were killed in a deadly cloud of toxic gas, which seeped from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. “There is substantial evidence that Union Carbide, with complete control over the pesticide factory in Bhopal, was deliberately negligent in the factory’s location, design, operation and maintenance.” Just two years prior to the disaster, Union Carbide’s own safety experts warned of the potential for a release of toxic materials. Union Carbide knowingly continued to produce their pesticides at the plant despite the warnings. The Bhopal plant managers “had violated the company’s safety standards and operated in a way that would not have been tolerated in the United States” (Bandura, 2000: 61). Union Carbide’s response to the tragedy was to displace responsibility by blaming the Indian government for its failure to effectively “regulate the plant and for allowing people to live nearby,” despite that the residential areas existed before the Union Carbide plant even opened (Bandura, 2000: 61). Even today, there is a movement to obtain restitution for the thousands of Indian residents affected by the tragedy. But the Bhopal situation is only one example among thousands of deadly environmental catastrophes worldwide.
In 1970 when the Clean Air Act became law, industrial polluters found that they could no longer freely contaminate the air without consequences. “The corporate response…was to deny problems, deny responsibility, resist controls and [threaten] to relocate production if hostile measures were implemented” (Edward, 1999: 173). Later other federal environmental laws were added, including the Clean Water Act, Resources Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and Superfund Amendments Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA), partly as a result of a widespread environmental crisis topped by several catastrophic environmental disasters in American residential communities. Industry found that they had to either comply with the laws (which might necessitate expensive capital improvements) or find ways to escape liability. Many corporations developed a series of tactics to avoid liability, and such tactics quickly became popular in industrial circles.
The growing list of tactics used by corporations to manipulate public perception regarding deviant corporate practices include (but are not limited to), falsification of data; creation of front groups to convince the public that the products are safe and society needs them; the discrediting of independent scientists; manipulation of research results and data; co-optation of researchers to control research agenda and outcome; attribution of blame; co-optation of local oppositional leaders; moral justification; euphemistic labeling; disregarding and/or distorting the consequences; diffusion of responsibility; positioning of the corporation as a faultless victim; advantageous comparison; displacement of responsibility; and dehumanization (Bandura, 2000: 61; Montague, 1997). When people engage in harmful corporate activity for personal gain or social inducements, they may also attempt to minimize the harm caused. “In addition to selective inattention and cognitive distortion of effects, the misrepresentation may involve active efforts to discredit evidence of the harm that is caused” (Bandura, 2000: 58). Other tactics may include the funding of scientific studies and control of outcome; hiring of former industry regulators; carefully-framed public relations campaigns; donations to local groups in and around contaminated communities in an effort to buy goodwill; community beautification projects; the arrangement of industry awards for the polluting company; manipulation of data through mathematical and other methods; community “education campaigns”; and blaming the victims.
According to Richard Grossman (Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy in Cambridge, Massachusetts):
corporations are the dominant institutions of our era. They define the culture as well as the economy. They define how we think. They define how we resist them. They define our aspirations. They write our history. They get us speaking their language – the language of sales and deceit. (Grossman, 1997: 11)
Strategies of corporations confronted with a negative public opinion are widely known and widely practiced within industry. Such strategies include changing public perception (rather than performance) through “education” and public relations campaigns, framing of arguments, and sanitized language. “The strategy of delivering carefully prepared responses to environmental concern is generally designed to confuse the argument, dissipate protest and so postpone action” (Edward, 1999: 174). Additionally, if pollution is proven to be intentional, “cleanup costs would not be covered by insurance, and polluters would be liable to civil suits by those they injured” (Ross, 2000: 56). Euphemistic labeling is also used as another tool to cover up reprehensible activities or confer a respectable status upon the company. “Through sanitized and convoluted verbiage, destructive conduct is made benign and those who engage in it are relieved a sense of personal agency” (Bandura, 2000: 58).
When confronted with heavy industrial contamination in residential communities and with a company who has no intention of addressing the contamination other than enlisting the assistance of public relations experts, community members must often engage in direct confrontation and protest. Those who have never had a political interest are often forced into direct response to what they perceive as an intolerable situation. An organized interest will evolve, and develop into what is called “grassroots” activism. “Grassroots environmentalists…are usually engaged at the local level in a power struggle with one corporation or another, directly challenging the corporation’s right to poison the local environment” (Montague, 1997: 10). Activists will often link with experienced organizers to develop a sophisticated network, and to confront the corporate polluter and attempt to instill accountability and remedy.
Organizers encourage people in contaminated communities to recognize that their enemy is…the corporations who profit from [the production of toxins] and government agencies who fail to protect people from them. Without a particular political agenda, their local, place-based analysis brings to light concrete linkages between community, environmental and labour concerns. (Kuester, 1995: 27)
The majority of communities suffering the effects of deviant environmental corporate practices are predominantly comprised of the poor, the elderly, and people of color. These communities are often targeted because they are often unable to fight back (Edward, 1999: 173; Baxter, 1996: 54; Markowitz, 2002: 268; Schmidt, 2004: A100).
By the 1990’s organizations in Louisiana and around the country were documenting the fact that a disproportionate number of chemical plants were being placed in minority communities. Greenpeace found that the percentage of vinyl chloride…plants situated in minority communities in Louisiana was ‘237 percent greater than the national average.’ (Markowitz, 2002: 268)
“Holding corporations accountable for their crimes will involve the solidarity of victimized communities and their supporters worldwide” (Sarangi, 2002: 49). There is no packaged formula to confront corporate polluters who knowingly violate laws and standards by choice. Careful research, the sharing of information between groups struggling to confront industry at the grassroots level, support from outsiders to grassroots activists, the reigning in of corporate power, the linking of grassroots activist groups nationally and internationally, the careful review of international laws and standards, and a review of the stipulations associated with trade agreements will certainly be a solid step toward remedy. As well, exposing public relations tactics as such will help isolate egregious polluters from more scrupulous industrialists. Additionally, the environmental movement has been “caught up in endless unsuccessful attempts to regulate corporate behavior around the edges, never tackling the central issue, which is the illegitimacy of corporate power” (Montague, 1997[A2]: 10). Perhaps above all, we must review in depth what creates a culture of polluters whereby such deviant practices are secretly rewarded within industry.
Research regarding corporate environmental crime is clearly lacking. Society would benefit from several thoughtful sociological studies, which carefully outline the development of this type of corporate crime within industry and its impact on communities. As globalization increases so too, will environmental crimes against humanity. We must, therefore, begin to understand corporate deviance (in the form of environmental crime) at the community, corporate, and international levels, so that populations have an understanding of the true costs of globalization, and so society may enable itself to make adjustments to assess more accountability to such corporations and relief to those most affected.
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Lisa Martino-Taylor is a graduate student in the Sociology and Criminal Justice Studies Department at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.