Nimbys as citizens: (re)defining the general interest

Nimbys as citizens: (re)defining the general interest

[SHS:ANTHRO_SE] Humanities and Social Sciences/Social Anthropology and ethnology

citoyens

environnement

intérêt général

Opponents to development projects are very often described as “Nimbys”, defending specific interests, and refusing to subsume them to the general interest of society. The aim of this paper is to try and understand, through the analysis of a mobilization against an industrial plant North of France, how alternative modalities of defining the general interest have been formulated. While the very notion of Nimby tends to produce a dichotomy between the rights of citizens (the general interest) and those of inhabitants (specific interests), it will be argued that in the case discussed here, it is precisely because they defined themselves as citizens that local residents refused the planned site. An interesting pattern of relationships to the mining past of the area can then be reconstructed, which allows a mobilization which at first sight seemed to pertain to an ordinary corporatist defense, to be analyzed as expressing a strong will to act and be seen as citizens.

Neveu, Catherine

Focaal- European Journal of Anthropology

2002-12

ENG

article in peer-reviewed journal

http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00177943

http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/17/79/43/PDF/Nimbys_as_citizens.pdf