ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY
https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2020.1803541
ARTICLE
Our ‘good neighbor’ Formosa Plastics: petrochemical damage(s) and the
meanings of money
Paul Jobin
Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
ABSTRACT
ARTICLE HISTORY
Through its chronic pollution and recurrent explosions, the petrochemical industry is the
source of constant damage for fenceline communities. Measures that might prevent or correct
this damage are postponed with a local flow of money, a situation viewed through the prism of
the different levels of damage, from chronic pollution to cancers and explosions. This article
analyzes how a collective lawsuit launched against a petrochemical complex in Taiwan is
challenging this economy. Formosa Plastics, the owner of the petrochemical complex, is one
of the world’s largest chemical companies. Its ‘good neighbor’ policy includes a mix of political
corruption, patronage care services and regular cash payments. Based on a four-year observation and in-depth interviews with the plaintiffs and other local sources, this article draws on the
sociology of money to examine the ambiguous role of compensation in disputes over environmental and public health damage. I show that the search for justice and compensation
nourishes a range of expectations. This includes, in proportion to the scope of the damage,
a moral condemnation of the polluters and the prevention of further harm, in addition to
economic assistance.
Received 6 April 2020
Accepted 28 July 2020
The literature on disputes over industrial damage seldom addresses problems of money, but when it does,
it generally prioritizes its negative meaning. This
money, which is basically corporate money, has the
power to divide the community of victims and discourage them from pursuing collective action (Ottinger
2013). The result is a ‘quiescence’ of the mobilization
(Shriver, Adams, and Messer 2014; Eaton and Kinchy
2016, cf. Jerolmack and Walker 2018) and may become
a ‘compensation trap’ (Van Rooij et al. 2012; Mah and
Wang 2019): the distribution of money becomes
a social habit that tends to normalize the pollution,
thus allowing companies to postpone efforts to prevent it.
Another stream of literature on environmental justice and the ‘languages of valuation’ (e.g., Martínez
Alier 2002; Centemeri 2015) emphasizes the incommensurability of industrial damage, and therefore
tends to relegate money as an awkward solution or
a reductionism of the multidimensional aspect of
industrial damage to ecosystems and human communities (notable exceptions are Kallis, GómezBaggethun, and Zografos 2013; O’Neill 2017).
Although I acknowledge the fundamental contribution of this literature – indeed a large part of the
research presented in this article resonates with it –
I find it problematic that its understanding of money is
incomplete. The critical literature on environmental
issues generally frames money as abstract and fungible
(i.e., a dollar is a dollar, whether earned or stolen,
CONTACT Paul Jobin
pauljobin3@gmail.com
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
KEYWORDS
Industrial hazards; fenceline
communities; environmental
health; compensation;
sociology of money; class
action
donated as a solatium or obtained by a court verdict
as compensation). Inversely, recent research on the
sociology of money inspired by the now-classic work
of Viviana Zelizer, The Social Meaning of Money (2017
[1994]), has shed a new light on the different meanings
of money and its fundamentally ambiguous and moral
dimension.
Through the study of a collective lawsuit launched
against a petrochemical complex in Taiwan, this article
focuses on the ambiguous role of compensation in
disputes over environmental and public health
damage. Since civil actions necessarily involve the
question of compensation, it is essential to examine
the nature of compensation itself. Despite procedural
slowness and uncertain outcomes, class actions offer
an opportunity to redefine the meaning of compensation for industrial damage. This article is based on
a four-year research project in Taiwan (2016–2019),
which included observation of court hearings, indepth interviews and group meetings with the plaintiffs, their lawyers and other local sources.
The petrochemical industry and the scope of
its damage
The petrochemical industry at issue here is the source
of numerous forms of hazards and damage. Through
its reliance on oil extraction and its massive release of
carbon emissions, at the global level, the petrochemical industry bears a large share of the responsibility for
12
P. JOBIN
Acknowledgements
Professors C.C. Chan and Jui-hua Chen, attorney Thomas Chan
and his colleagues Aslan Hung and Shu-fang Huang welcomed
and encouraged me in this research. I also owe many thanks to
Brother Wu, Hao-chung Chan, Robin Yuan-ho Huang and Mingyi Wu for their help and generosity. My research assistants Chiashuo Tang, Chee-Wei Ying, Fei-hsin Chang, Shih-hao Jheng and
Yi-ying Tsai aided in conducting and transcribing interviews. PeiYi Hsieh and Hung-yang Lin offered further notes and transcriptions. Discussions with Wenling Tu, Kanlin Hsu, Xavier Sun,
Yanling Ting and other participants of the Citizen Platform on
Formosa’s Sixth Naphtha Cracker proved quite fruitful. Precious
comments from Pascal Marichalar, Laura Centemeri, Sezin
Topçu, and Rebecca Fite, and invaluable suggestions from two
anonymous reviewers and editor Stewart Lockie greatly helped
to improve the initial manuscript. Shih-hao Jheng made the
maps with QGIS software, an open source Geographic
Information System.
Disclosure statement
The author reports no potential conflict of interest.
Notes on contributor
Paul Jobin is an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of
Sociology, Academia Sinica, in Taiwan. His research focuses
on environmental issues in Asia, particularly Taiwan and
Japan. Recent publications include a contribution to Critical
Zones, edited by Bruno Latour & Peter Weibel (MIT Press) and
the co-edited book Environmental Movements and Politics of
the Asian Anthropocene, forthcoming at ISEAS (Singapore).
ORCID
Paul Jobin
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0952-4746
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