Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor.

In the introduction to his book, which mainly uses case studies of different environmentalist writer-activists from the global South, Nixon describes the problems attached  to humanity’s common habit of assuming violence to be immediate and explosive, concentrated directly in a visible event. Examples of more visible environmental catastrophes are tornadoes and erupting volcanoes. However, the problem of climate change calls attention to the idea that there are also catastrophes, like acidifying oceans and deforestation, that lead to a form of violence that is incremental. The harmful repercussions often go on for years, decades or even centuries. Defining the problems that are connected with less visible forms of violence caused by environmental issues, Nixon introduces the concept of slow violence. Taking from John Galtung’s concept of structural violence the idea that there are hidden agencies and structures in society that can give rise to more personal acts of violence, Nixon develops the idea that there are certain forms of violence that manifest themselves in more gradual and subtle ways. Additionally, Nixon discusses the impact of slow violence on the environments and environmentalism of the poor. Writing about the unequal distribution of resources, especially in the global South, Nixon explains how it is people who lack fundamental resources that are the principal victims of slow violence. Moreover, the impacts of slow violence such as global warming are also unequally distributed across the globe. Following this, problems and activisms of people in the global South often get ignored specifically because of the invisibility of slow violence. Nixon argues that a move beyond event-centered accounts of violence is required, especially in the light of human-induced climate change. He shows how slow violence requires a new understanding of humanist history that displaces the positions of victim and perpetrator. Since one of the major challenges of slow violence concerns itself with representation, Nixon discusses the possibility of turning the emergencies of slow violence into stories dramatic enough to gain public and political attention. In this way, Nixon shows how stories about slow violence can make readers more aware of their implicated position within the Anthropocene. Through the discussion of the unequal distribution of the impacts of slow violence, Nixon also offers a way out of the paralyzing idea that if we are all implicated, no one is.

Author of this entry: Lisanne Meinen

Nixon, Rob. “Introduction.” In Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2009: 1-44.