A matter of class?: Environmental conflict and the vernacular politics of the commons

Abstract

A few years ago, while attending the weekly meeting of a social movement in an industrial city in southern Italy, I was struck by the comment of one of its leaders, who pointed to “the environmental issue” as the “real ground of class struggle.” I was struck by this rare reference to “class.” In this paper, I explore the implications of that claim in the socio-political context of a city ridden by a profound socio-economic crisis and severe issues of environmental degradation. The paper explores how the class dimension of environmental struggles is reflected in the discourses and practices of the movement. Starting from the hypothesis that the movement pursued a ‘class politics’ without a ‘class language,’ I examine their attempt at rephrasing ‘class struggle’ on the ground of popular ecologies and the rearticulation of the relationship between ‘labour,’ ‘environment’ and social reproductive politics.