Privileged access and rural vulnerabilities: Examining social and environmental exploitation in bioenergy development in the American Midwest
Privileged access and rural vulnerabilities: Examining social and environmental exploitation in bioenergy development in the American Midwest
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特权准入和农村脆弱性：审视美国中西部生物能源开发的社会和环境剥削
DOI：
10.1016/j.jrurstud.2016.01.008
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发表时间：
2016
影响因子：
5.1
通讯作者：
C. Bain
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
L. Kulcsar;T. Selfa;C. Bain
由于城市中心享有进入农村腹地进行与自然资源开采和加工相关的经济活动的特权，农村地区通常会出现负面的环境外部性。对那些促进经济活动及其所造成的不平等现象都是由农村社区本身推动的情况，人们关注较少。社区内部的不实陈述使环境问题自然化，转移了人们对与经济发展的成本和风险相关的不平等问题的注意力。在这一背景下，重要的是要审查当地的观念、框架和权力结构，这些观念、框架和权力结构造成并延续了经济发展所需的自然资源获取方面的不对称，以及它们造成的当地脆弱性。借鉴弗罗伊登贝格的特权获取和特权账户理论，本文考察了美国中西部农村地区生物燃料工厂的推广和发展。在这里，生物燃料开发的支持者认为，生物燃料设施非常适合当地条件，因为当地主要生物质投入的大规模玉米生产非常广泛。借鉴六个案例研究社区在农村堪萨斯和爱荷华州的调查数据，通过深入的利益相关者访谈增强，我们讨论了当地支持生物燃料生产的环境问题的背景下。结果表明，尽管有证据表明生物燃料生产对当地生计的贡献很小，但农村社区的支持很大。我们展示了这些特权账户如何在当地为生物燃料生产创造了基本统一的支持，并在利益的不确定性、潜在的环境危害和长期发展挑战方面保持沉默。
Negative environmental externalities typically emerge in rural areas due to urban centers' privileged access to the rural hinterland for economic activities related to the extraction and processing of natural resources. Less attention has been given to those cases when both the promotion of economic activities and their consequential inequalities are driven from within rural communities themselves. Privileged accounts within communities naturalize environmental concerns and divert attention from the inequalities associated with the costs and risks of economic development. Within this context, it is important to examine local perceptions, framings, and power structures that create and perpetuate asymmetries in access to natural resources for economic development and the local vulnerabilities they create. Drawing on Freudenberg's theory of privileged access and privileged accounts, this paper examines the promotion and development of biofuels plants in the rural American Midwest. Here, proponents of biofuels development argued that biofuel facilities were ideally suited to local conditions, where large-scale corn production, the main biomass input, is extensive. Drawing on data from surveys of six case study communities in rural Kansas and Iowa, augmented by in-depth stakeholder interviews, we discuss the local support towards biofuels production in the context of environmental concerns. The results indicate significant rural community support despite evidence that the contribution of biofuels production to local livelihoods was minimal. We show how these privileged accounts create largely unified support locally for biofuels production and quiescence concerning the disproportionality of benefits, potential environmental harms and long term development challenges.