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The Health Factor in Anti-Waste Incinerator Campaigns in Beijing and Guangzhou*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2013

Thomas Johnson
Thomas Johnson*
Affiliation:
City University of Hong Kong. Email: tjohnson@cityu.edu.hk.
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Abstract

This article draws on interview and documentary data from three anti-incinerator campaigns in Beijing and Guangzhou to examine how urban middle-class homeowners respond to potential local health hazards. It illustrates how and why campaigners shifted from a heavily localized “not-in-my-backyard” (NIMBY) approach that opposed incinerators based on their siting towards a much broader critique of incineration that exploited weaknesses in waste management policy. Although public health concerns remained central during the course of the three campaigns, how they were presented changed as campaigners developed expertise through self-study. This enabled them to construct an alternative narrative about incineration and present their arguments from a public interest perspective, thus deflecting the pejorative NIMBY label.

Keywords

waste incinerationmiddle classenvironmenthealthcitizen advocacyChina
Type
Special Section on Dying for Development
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 214 , June 2013 , pp. 356 - 375
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2013 

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Footnotes

*

The author would like to thank Anna Lora-Wainwright and Jennifer Holdaway for their comments and suggestions. Any errors remain the author's alone. The work described in this paper was fully supported by a grant from City University of Hong Kong (Project No. 7200243).

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