Waste Management in Ireland: Discourses of Domination in an (un)Reflexive Society

Introduction

From the 1970s, the environment has been one of the most legislated areas of European Union (EU) policy. Waste management is a core issue in this respect (European Commission, 1999: 6), reflected in the Irish context with the adoption of key EU waste directives. With the introduction of these regulative/legal regimes, together with the establishment of environmental watchdogs such as the Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as an official recognition of the importance of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and communities in policy deliberations, reflexive modernisation would seem to be the order of the day in the case of Irish waste management. On closer inspection, however, things might not be what they seem.

Despite the establishment of such a comprehensive regulative framework, Irish waste policy is failing in terms of its own set standards and principles. The generation of municipal waste per capita continues to increase ¹ with the Irish State finding itself in the unenviable position of topping the European table for the generation of packaging waste ² and municipal waste. ³ These circumstances have emerged at a time when Ireland has experienced a period of incredible economic growth, where there is little doubt that such intense economic activity is directly linked to the increase in waste production, a relationship that is well correlated according to the European Environmental Agency (European Environmental Agency, 1999: 205). At the same time, a number of government key policy options – namely regional ‘super-dumps’, domestic waste charging and incineration – have proven highly unpopular with members of the public, leading to campaigns of vigorous opposition. For their part, the government have had to rely on increasingly coercive measures in order to ensure that policy is implemented, resulting in the removal of decision-making power on waste policy from locally-elected representatives and even in some case, the jailing of protestors.

Ulrich Beck's influential writings on reflexive modernisation provides a rather different picture of a societal response to environmental concerns than the one outlined above. For Beck (1992), modernity has been responsible for the creation of ecological risks as an unintended consequence of industrialisation to the extent that these risks now threaten life itself. The emergence of the ‘Risk Society’, together with the dissolution of structures that defined ‘industrial society’ (concentrated in issues of wealth distribution), give rise to a more individualised and self-critical approach to economic, technological, scientific and political cultures. As a consequence, society is forced to literally confront itself, and through the democratisation of non-political institutions and the emergence of social movements, take measures in order to avoid imminent catastrophe. In short, Beck proposes that society will shift towards a new epoch – the age of reflexive modernisation.

Yet, its basic premise of social transition from ‘industrial’ modernity to ‘reflexive’, or ‘second’ modernity (Beck, 1992; 1996; Beck and Lau, 2005) simply is not occurring when it comes to Irish waste management, where any evidence of reflexivity is located very much at the periphery of power and decision-making – if at all. Given the conditions outlined by Beck (1992), part of the difficulty here can be attributed to a conceptual failure to capture the complexity of power relationships. This article looks at the particularity of Irish waste management and deploys a framework derived from Michel Foucault's conceptualisation of power in order to address some identified weaknesses in Beck's argument. In doing so, it is hoped that such an approach can make a worthy and relatively novel contribution to a sociology of waste and hopefully provide grounds for a wider discussion on the application of Beck's theory.

The discussion begins by locating the issue of waste within an emerging body of sociological literature and at the same time, draws attention to the importance power relationships play in the construction of key discourses that frame the issue. Frequently, these discourses encapsulate the interests of societal elites and have a significant impact on government policy. Moreover, these discourses marginalise voices of dissent and this is particularly evident when considering waste management as an issue of governance. Next, the article focuses on Beck's conceptualisation of reflexive modernisation. One of the problems in exposing Beck's work to critical examination is that at various times, Beck himself seems to vacillate between asserting that reflexive modernisation is happening now and is ‘real’ (1992: 194–5), or postulating that it is just around the next corner – ‘… there will be a real transformation of society which will lead us out of the previous modes of thought and action.’ (1992: 20) In fact, Beck gives three possibilities for the future shape of modernity – differential politics, more of the same (industrial society) and ‘the democratisation of Techno-Economic development’ (1992: 225), adding to an uncertainty in his argument. Crucially, it will be argued that Beck's conceptualisation relies too heavily on the assumption that fundamental and dynamic social change will occur as the result of an unintended consequence of modernity, a modernity that is characterised by a separation of interests of the political and the economic. It will also be argued that Beck invests too much faith in the conviction that moral concerns will emerge from the sphere of activity he refers to as the ‘techno-economic’ to the extent that key discourses of consumption and accumulation can be successfully challenged. This misplaced faith is also found in Beck's proposal that an emerging sub-political sphere, a construct comprising of disparate democratising elements within economic and scientific spheres, as well as an alliance of citizens and groups, will eventually overwhelm political institutions and overcome the power manifested by an economic elite.

While reflexivity is not occurring in the context of waste management in Ireland, Foucault's theoretical treatment of power might offer some insight into why this is the case. It will be contended here that what is required is a conceptualisation of power that accounts for the micro as well as the macro. In applying such a framework, it is then possible to highlight the role played by discourses of self-regulation and subjugation in preserving the sovereignty of consumption and accumulation in contemporary Irish society. It is these discourses and the power that is invested in them that characterises the issue of waste, and not reflexivity. Likewise, it is power and domination, rather than moral concern that underpins policy and the behaviour of the techno-economic sphere.

This is particularly pertinent when considering the individualisation of the issue of waste through government public information campaigns and enforced, in some cases, through rather coercive means. The individualisation of waste – the framing of the issue as a problem created primarily by individual consumption – also serves to deflect attention away from the main waste producers in society, thereby rendered the issue as one of disposal rather than prevention. It is an approach that is alos manifested in the waste management policy options exercised by the Irish state, promoting ‘end-of-pipe’ solutions that minimise the cost of waste production to the industrial and commercial sectors. The Irish government has been largely successful in portraying the waste crisis currently enveloping Ireland as largely down to the actions of individual households and citizens, despite the fact that household waste only constitutes approximately between 6 and 8 percent of waste produced ⁴ (Environmental Protection Agency, 2006: 4). At the same time, the major transgressors – industry, construction and commercial enterprises – continue to produce increase amounts of waste with seeming impunity. (Murray, 2006a: 112) Lastly, the discussion focuses on the use of discursive practice as a means of marginalising dissent from community groups, illustrating that political and economic elites have been largely successful in managing opposition from the sub-political. This point is illustrated by examining the use of the ‘Not In My Back Yard’ (NIMBY) discourse as a way of portraying grievances and environmental concerns as selfish and irrational interests.

Before beginning however, it is important to point out that the application of Foucault's ideas here are by no means definitive, nor are they intended to be. This reflects a view that Foucault's work was provisional rather than comprehensive – ‘He [Foucault] does not elaborate a general theoretical perspective or pretend that his concepts are exact or precise.’ (Hunt and Wickham, 1994: 3) As a consequence, there has to be an acknowledgement that the use of Foucault's concepts here are very much adapted rather than applied. This is certainly the case with the discussion on resistance in the penultimate section of the article, where there remains a large question mark over whether Foucault ever affords enough conceptual space for individual thought and action that is formidable enough to withstand the onslaught of disciplinary power. Likewise, while Foucault can be accused of concentrating almost exclusively how power is exercised to the extent that it becomes ‘… a strategy without a subject’ (Sarup, 1993: 80), the exercise of power in this discussion is located in specific sites of social action. Therefore, what is modestly proposed here is that the deployment of Foucault offers valuable insight into some identified shortcomings in Beck's reflexive modernisation thesis and contributes to a wider understanding of the issues involved in examining the distinctly unreflexive nature of Irish waste management.

A sociology of waste – the Irish context

There has been an increasing recognition within various academic disciplines of the importance of developing an analytical approach to Irish waste and waste management (Boyle, 2002; Fagan, 2003; Davies, 2003; Davies, 2007; Murray, 2006a; Murray, 2007). Given that the issue can be explicated as highly symbolic of Ireland's recent economic fortunes – as well as its environmental costs – this remains a relatively underdeveloped field within the discipline of Sociology. In general terms, environmental issues have historically suffered within sociology from what Cudworth terms a ‘nature phobia’ (2003: 16), based largely on how the ‘natural’ and the ‘social’ were conceptualised separately where ultimately, Dunlap and Catton successfully challenged this division in their call for a ‘New Environmental Paradigm’ (Dunlap and Catton, 1979). An emerging social constructionist approach focused on the framing of environmental issues and the active role played by institutions and actors in this endeavour. This includes the issue of waste, a term that has many connotations, all of which, according to Winthrop, are linked to the social organisation of modernity (1980: 274). More specifically, municipal waste can be seen as a by-product of ‘order building’, a process that ‘… produces ‘matter out of place’, including biochemical, nuclear and human wastes that are toxic to the order.’ (Ilcan, 2006: 853) Moreover, Fagan asserts that municipal waste is derived from production and consumption patterns and should be viewed as ‘a product of social relations of global consumerism’ (Fagan, 2003: 81). Like many other environmental issues, waste has an important global dimension, where the transnational trade in waste and waste technology is a highly lucrative business and transnational corporations dominate this terrain (Fagan, 2003; Murray, R., 1999). For instance, the Irish EPA estimates that almost 1.6 million tonnes of recyclable waste streams was exported from Ireland in 2006, mainly to the UK, Spain, Portugal and Asia (EPA, 2006: 9). This accounts for half the total municipal waste produced in that time (EPA, 2006: 4). However, given the toxic nature of certain waste streams, it is inevitable that this has effectively meant exporting the risk attributed to waste to poorer, less powerful corners of the world (Yearley, 1996: 27–9).

The social construction of waste as a risk and consequence of modernity is underscored in Ulrich Beck's ‘Risk Society’. A risk society is one that is ‘… confronted by the challenges of the self-created possibility, hidden at first, then increasingly apparent, of the self-destruction of all life on this earth’ (Beck, 1995: 67). This is an unintended consequence of modernity, where science and industry unwittingly conspire in the despoliation of nature and humanity in the name of progress, through, for instance, the creation of nuclear and toxic waste. Scientific knowledge is of seminal importance in legitimising and delegitimising risk claims and counter-claims where ‘[s]cientific judgement's monopoly on the truth … forces the victims themselves to make use of all the methods and means of scientific analysis in order to succeed with their claims.’ (Beck, 1992: 71) The threat posed by the production of waste is not merely hypothetical however. While Beck focuses on the social construction of risk to the extent that he gives secondary importance to ‘real’, physical risk (Cudworth, 2003: 22), Berglund, in her ethnography of a German anti-toxic protest, argues instead that –

ephemeral facts like utterances when physical life chances for hundreds of years into the future are at stake.' (2001: 322)

Moreover, the discourses that frame risks constitute very real exercises in power. For instance, when the Irish government bestows legitimacy on certain scientific discourse on incineration, it effectively marginalises competing truth claims, so that –

Additionally, these scientific discourses can be deployed to further the interests of different parties, where, for instance, the government and the private sector promote certain discourses on incineration in order to further their own interests (see below).

The management of the risks in contemporary society has elicited a variety of theoretical and policy responses from different quarters. For instance, Beck's key contribution – and the focus of this article – is that society will have to undergo a fundamental re-organisation in order to address these risks and this effectively means an end to the current trajectory of modernity and industrialisation (Beck, 1992). Others take a more optimistic view of modernity and see the real possibility of an ecological modernity (EM) emerging where ‘… environmental challenges may necessitate certain changes in society, but not in the basic political and economic structure of the Western model of society’ (Rootes, 2001: 3). According to Christoff (1996), EM encompasses a number of theoretical and policy positions differentiated largely in their normative content and these can be plotted on a continuum between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ EM. On the one hand there is what Kelly describes as a ‘socio-democratic’ approach involving both the state and citizens in accepting responsibility for environment issues (2007, in O'Sullivan (ed.): 223). Kelly cites the EU as an important source of what is effectively Christoff's ‘strong EM’, given that the democratic component in policymaking is a prominent feature (Christoff, 1996: 490). ⁵ Irish waste policy has been largely shaped by EU legislation and has resulted in a clear improvement in standards. One environment scientist interviewed claimed that prior to this, Ireland's primary response to the issue was to bury waste in ‘a hole in the ground’. ⁶ This improvement in waste management resulted in the Irish government setting out comprehensive targets for the diversion of waste from landfill sites, earmarking the use of so-called ‘regional super-dumps’, introducing domestic waste charging and proposing the introduction of incineration (Dempsey, 1998).

Yet, despite the introduction of EU regulatory frameworks, Ireland has an unenviable record in that it received the second highest number of complaints for EU environmental regulatory infringements between 1998 and 2003 (McKenna, 2004). This points to the other side of Christoff's continuum, a so-called ‘weak’ EM, characterised by a more technocratic approach by the state to addressing environmental issues (Christoff, 1996: 490) and where the state displays a certain reluctance in developing a capacity sufficient to deliver on environmental protection (Kelly, 2007, in O'Sullivan (ed.): 223). This is, according to Kelly, a more accurate description of the Irish government's managerial approach, characterised by the strong influence exerted by special interest groups and by assigning key policymaking roles to consultant engineers (ibid). For instance, one engineering consultancy firm was responsible for drawing up all but two of the country's waste strategies, including the feasibility study for an incinerator for Dublin. As well as supporting the introduction of incineration, this firm took on a project management role for the Dublin Regional Waste Plan, supplied a ‘Local Communications Co-ordinator’ to liase with local communities, and partly funded a community consultation process (Murray, 2004: 128; Mercator Marketing Research, 2002: 32).

Davies illustrates this argument further by pointing out that the preferred policy options of waste disposal and incineration indicates the domination of ‘the interests of the private sector.’ (Davies, 2007: 53) The introduction of incineration has been largely justified by the government on the basis that it is the most efficient and safest means of diverting large amounts waste from landfill (Dempsey, 1998: 15). This reliance on ‘end-of-pipe’ solutions (Boyle, 2001) seeks to minimise and externalise much of costs of waste production to industry. In this way, the Irish government has sought to maintain Ireland's economic competitiveness and at the same time, attempted to meet EU targets on waste diversion from landfill. Not surprisingly, the industrial sector has supported such an approach. An influential report by Forfàs, the national policy and advisory board for enterprise, trade, science, technology and innovation, published in 2001, called for the introduction of incineration and the fast-tracking of the planning process for waste infrastructure to off-set ‘uncertainties’ that could deter private investment. (Forfás, 2001). For their part, the Irish employers organisation, the Irish Businesses and Employers Confederation (IBEC), fully supports incineration as part of an integrated approach to waste management, stating that it contributes to ‘a clean environment’ and reduces reliance on landfilling. ⁷

Lastly, Fagan (2003) makes the important argument that a sociological consideration of Irish waste management must also include a focus on the issue of governance. However, given the contentious nature of the issues and power relationships involved, a more apt description of Irish waste management would seem to be a ‘crisis of governance’ (Davies, 2007: 52). When opposition to government plans threatened to halt the implementation of its waste strategy, its response was decisive. For a time, local politicians, mindful of public opposition to super-dumps and incineration, effectively stalled the adoption of government policy. As a result, by 2001, with the threat of EU legal action looming, the government took the highly controversial move to remove decision-making power from elected representatives on this issue, giving it instead to unelected officials. ⁸ With this legislation in place, the government were able to ensure that all local authorities were now compliant with policy. ⁹ Just as importantly, Irish waste policy was premised on the idea that communities would be actively involved in implementing proposed waste management strategies (Murray, 2006b: 435; MC O'Sullivan et al., 1999: 84). In Dublin, much of this involvement was limited to engagement in public consultation processes, where public input was reduced to responding to existing plans (Buckingham et al., 2005: 435–6). While Davies describes the approach employed by the Dublin local authorities as ‘inventive’, she concludes the Ireland's overall approach adopts an ‘information-deficit model’ that is chiefly geared towards correcting public positions ‘so that they concur with those expressed by experts through a process of information provision.’ (2003: 85–6)

Currently, opposition continues around the country with the government relying on an increasingly coercive approach to dissention, most readily seen in the so-called ‘bin tax’ dispute, which led to the jailing of 12 protestors in 2003. ¹⁰ More recently, in 2007 the Green Party entered into coalition government, with its leader John Gormley becoming Environment Minister. Before entering government, the Greens pledged to get rid of incineration, with Gormley's own constituency earmarked as the location for the Dublin incinerator. However, Gormley conceded in October 2007 that the four proposed incinerators for Ireland could not now be prevented. ¹¹

Limits to reflexive modernity: the multi-dimensions of power

Beck (1992) believes that while the age of reflexive modernity has not yet happened, many important processes necessary for this transition are already in place and it is risk considerations that govern this transition –

Reflexive modernisation amounts to ‘self-confrontation’ with risk society (Beck, 1996: 28), where the emergences of risks are ‘a natural outgrowth of success rather than any systemic crisis or contradiction’ (Jarvis, 2007: 25). Reflexivity comes about when the institutions of industrial society no longer possess the capacity to adequately address these risks. Instead, reflexivity challenges the instrumental rationalisation of progress, summed up in the irrational belief that ‘… things will go well, that in the end everything we have brought down upon ourselves can be turned into progressiveness’ (Beck, 1992: 214). For Beck, modernity is ‘inherently reflexive’ where ‘contemporary life is contingent upon and subject to ongoing change as the result of a dynamic flux of new knowledge and information’ (Healy, 2001: 43). Crucially, reflexivity occurs within many of the institutions and structures responsible for creating risks in the first place. For instance, science goes through a transition from ‘primary’ to ‘reflexive scientization’, where ‘the sciences are confronted with their own products’ and ‘defects’(Beck, 1992: 155).

As a consequence of this transition, the political sphere is opened up to the possibility of ‘sub-politics’. The sub-political comprises of a number of different elements, including newly reflexive sciences, and technological knowledge, as well as citizen activism. The techno-economic sphere too is transformed under processes of scrutiny, criticism and alteration, where it ‘loses its character as non-politics in parallel to the increase in scope of its potential for change and endangerment.’ (Beck, 1992: 185–6) As a result, the techno-economic develops a ‘political and moral dimension’, where institutions and actors seek to pre-empt ecological disaster – ‘If one wished, one might say that the devil of the economy must sprinkle himself with the holy water of public morality and put on a halo of concern for society and nature.’ (1992: 186) Beck asserts that the triumph of the sub-political will ultimately lead to institutional opportunities for ‘self-criticism’, an opening up of scientific and technical discourses to ‘interdisciplinary partial public spheres’ and the alignment of ‘preserving, discursive functions of politics’, where individual social and democratic rights are protected, and crucially, expanded (1992: 235).

Beck's writings have created ‘a small industry into risk research’ (Jarvis, 2007: 24), where some researchers are keen to point to evidence of a shift towards reflexive modernity and the development of a viable sub-political sphere. In this vein, Healy cites the public debate over genetically manipulated crops in the UK in the late 1990s as evidence that ‘civil society has been acting on revised understandings of science and expertise for some time.’ (2001: 42) Likewise, Aiken looks at the social economy as a signifier of the growing relevance of the sub-political, where social actors exercise decision-making power, as well as ‘setting the themes for the future amid a new order of governance.’ (2000: 10)

However, this enthusiasm for reflexivity is distinctly absent when it comes Ireland and the environment. In examining the attitudes of the Irish public towards the environment, Kelly found that empirical evidence for a growing sense of reflexivity was ‘somewhat weak’ (Kelly, 2007, in O'Sullivan (ed.): 215). While there were indications to suggest an increase in ‘environmental mobilisation at the local level’, environmental discourses critical of the state were often marginalised, leading the author to conclude that ‘some elements characteristic of risk society are visible, if only to be strongly challenged and marginalised by others, especially by economic and political elites.’ (Kelly, 2007, in O'Sullivan (ed.): 214–5) The question is, therefore, given the introduction of legislative standards on waste and the inclusion of elements of the sub political in policymaking processes, why does reflexivity remain weak and at the periphery of Irish waste management?

The issue here is, to a significant degree, a conceptual one, centred on the manner of the social transition envisaged by Beck. He asserts that reflexivity emerges as an unintentional side-effect of modernity, where critical views of industrial society become ‘democratised’ (1996: 33), with the implication that this critique of modernity serves as the vehicle for social change. However, given that this would involve a seismic shift in politics, the economy and the utilisation of technologies, there is little mention by Beck on how power relationships (both micro and macro) will be so radically altered in order to achieve this result. For example, as Elliot argues, Beck's contention that social change comes chiefly from unintended structural consequences (reflexivity) sits uncomfortably with the seemingly lesser role of calculated social action (reflection), where the nature of interaction and ascribed roles remain largely ambiguous (2002: 302).

At a fundamental level, Beck's framework of social transformation would appear to rest on the notion of a pre-existing separation of interests and power primarily between the political and the techno-economic. (Beck, 1992: 184) While both spheres exercise power in the industrial society, there exists ‘relative autonomy’ between politics and the techno-economic. However, in reflexive modernity this autonomy is far less clear, where political structures are ‘administrators of a development they neither have planned for nor are able to structure, but must nevertheless somehow justify’ (Beck, 1992: 187). This leads to a transformation whereby the ‘the political becomes non-political and the non-political political’ and the sub-political becomes the focus of decision-making (Ibid: 186). Where once there existed a clear demarcation of interests, fear of ecological catastrophe transforms these imperatives, relegating the economic tenets of accumulation and consumption to the margins.

While separating interests into the political and the economic-technical might well work as a conceptual tool, such a clear differentiation simplifies, and therefore, misses much of the complexity of the relationship between the political and the economic. Converging interests are hardly unexpected in this respect – the Irish government would seem to share the imperative of economic growth with the industrial sector and this is demonstrated in a shared preference for end-of pipe waste solutions. Instead, if power is conceptualised as being most effective when it is largely invisible and amounts to a ‘subtle, calculated technology of subjection’ (Foucault, 1975: 221), it is possible to argue as Brass does that any ‘artificial demarcation’ of spheres of activity has effectively ‘obscured from view most power relations in society’ (2000: 319). Here, the exercise, practice and technologies of power elude clear and linear conceptualisations, or neatly defined binary structures of opposition (Foucault, 1980: 142). While power relations ‘… delineate general conditions of domination’, just as crucially – ‘… dispersed, hetromorphous, localised procedures of power are adapted, reinforced and transformed by these global strategies, all this being accompanied by numerous phenomena of inertia, displacement and resistance …’ (Foucault, 1980: 142).

As a consequence of subjugation and self-regulation, dominant discourses of consumption and accumulation are more embedded and resilient within contemporary Irish society than reflexive modernisation is prepared to acknowledge. The self-regulation of citizens in government information campaigns such as ‘Race against waste’ or in the general acceptance by the Irish public of the principle of domestic waste charges (both discussed below) – are premised on the idea that we can continue to consume almost as we wish – and this in turn suggests a far more complex power configuration at work than Beck gives conceptual room for. This has a particular resonance when it comes to Beck's belief that the techno-economic, the primary site of power in contemporary society, will merely accede to moral concerns in the face of impending ecological danger, neglecting that if anything, discourses of accumulation and consumption are increasingly colonising the social and the cultural in contemporary Irish society.

Of the three scenarios Beck envisages for the future shape of modernity, it is tempting to characterise what is happening in relation to Ireland and waste management as an expression of a pre-reflexive or industrial society where power has yet to be configured in a manner appropriate to reflexive modernisation. This is the society of the consumer-individual, which Beck characterises as the ‘same as ever, only bigger, better, faster’ (1992: 225), where lifestyles and economic power are separated from ecological concerns. Similarly, it is the delinking of waste production from economic growth that fundamentally shapes Irish waste policy and not as Beck suggests ‘halos’ of concern from the techno-economic sphere. It is an approach that that correlates to Christoff's notion of weak EM, which merely puts ‘a green gloss on industrial development’ (Christoff, 1996: 186–90). As a result, Boyle (2002) suggests that the adoption of incineration and disposal options ensures ‘the legitimacy of the underlying regime of accumulation’ and that –

Waste then becomes a disposal rather than preventative matter and negates any other significant costs to industry that would be incurred if production and design processes had to be amended to prevent waste production in the first instance (Murray, 2006a: 113). At the same time, this delinking process involves a multi-dimensional exercise of power, thereby ensuring reflexivity on waste is ineffectual and minimal. The next two sections examine different aspects of this exercise of power.

Waste management in the individualised society

Beck points to individualisation as a prominent feature of late modernity. Global capitalism encourages the primacy of the individual in terms of identity, work, consumption, politics and culture, where ‘socio-economic relations place the emphasis on an individualized sense of responsibility for personal achievement’ (Webb, 2004: 722). Processes of ‘detraditionalization’ increase personal choice and freedom, while confrontation with risk and a growing environmental awareness are frequently expressed through the emergence of new social movements (Beck, 1992: 90). In this context, Ireland's growing waste problem has been largely presented as a discourse of individual responsibility (Fagan, 2003: 75; Murray, 2006a). The government has poured, by its standards, significant resources into campaigns aimed directly at the general public – even though household waste constitutes, at best, 15 per cent of waste going to landfill (Murray, 2006a: 107). The ‘Race Against Waste’ public awareness campaign was launched in October 2003. It was initially designed to be provocative and shocking, so much so that its ‘flag ship’ television advert had to be broadcast after the 9.00 pm watershed. In the advert, a typical suburban street is literally deluged by a wave of waste and vermin. The viewer is able to witness environmental meltdown – the sky darkens and the earth seems literally to spew forth mountains of decaying waste. In the midst of this, a little girl is virtually engulfed by debris and rats until a man plucks the infant from harm's way, demonstrating quite vividly that individual responsibility and action can save the day. The subtext is clear – those who live on leafy suburbs are those responsible for the flood of waste threatening us all. The advert, along with a campaign website that offers wide-ranging data on the amount of waste produced per person, ¹² epitomises the concept of individualisation. In this instance, according to the makers of the advert, one of the key objectives was to ‘produce emotional markers’ in order to ‘deliver the personal ownership necessary to shift attitudes and consequently behaviour’. ¹³ However, the prospect of the individualised society here is indicative of self-regulation, coercion and disempowerment rather than liberation and choice. While the government's central concern is to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill, it is individuals and households that are portrayed as the main offenders, while in reality, industry accounts for the production of the vast majority of this waste.

It could be argued that household waste, by its nature, should receive this extra attention, given that its composition and treatment is more complex than other waste streams. Instead, the government has sought to argue that the problem is primarily about rising waste levels and falling landfill capacity (Dempsey, 1998: 3–4), hence the images of mountains of waste swamping suburban streets in the ‘Race against Waste’ television advert. Yet despite this claim, the EPA reported that in 2006 landfill gate fees actually decreased, effectively making landfilling more economically viable in some cases than recycling (EPA, 2006: 5). ¹⁴ Crucially too, focusing attention on household waste effectively means a concentration on waste disposal or at best, diversion from landfill, rather than prevention and minimisation. As a result, waste generation is framed as a problem of consumption rather than production. For instance, the EPA's calculates the amount of household waste going to landfill by including packaging waste. (EPA, 2004: 227–9; EPA, 2006: 10–12) While the industrial sector and the government have in recent years initiated a voluntary packaging waste recovery programme (REPAK) in line with the EU's ‘Packaging Directive’, a significant proportion of packaging waste is still passed to the consumer. Obviously households do not actually produce packaging, but households and individuals have the dubious responsibility and cost for its disposal.

Here, individualisation is a profoundly asymmetrical arrangement – ‘you are on the one hand made responsible for yourself, but on the other hand are “dependent on conditions which completely elude your grasp”’ (Bauman, 2001: 5). This is the illusion of choice in the individualised society because ‘individual responsibility’ is enforced by the threat of legal sanction, where households are obliged to pay for waste separation, collection and disposal. It is an exercise of power ‘whose object and end are not the relations of sovereignty but the relations of discipline’ (Foucault, 1975: 208). Far from creating space for individual freedom or choice, it in fact reduces the capacity to critically challenge government policy. On the one hand, the state seeks to ‘foster the life of individuals’ (Foucault, 1994: 405), while on the other, individualisation is an invaluable technique of power that seeks to ‘minimise dangerous resistances’ (Pickett, 1996: 459). The sheer pervasiveness of the discourse that we should all clean up the mess that we have made, embodied in the ‘Polluter Pays Principle’, ¹⁵ has, in the case of waste in Ireland, assigned ‘freedom’ to the realm of instrumental rationalisation and self-regulation, and critically, it signals the diffusion of responsibility for waste production. Beck claimed individualization was largely dependent on ‘standardization’ and it is ‘the most advanced form of societalization …’ (1992: 131). Yet, the essence of this standardisation is a disciplinary power that ‘incorporates both technologies of domination and technologies of the self; both coercion and freedom’ (Milchman and Rosenberg, 2005: 338). Moreover, it is a conceptualisation of freedom that is premised on the production of individuals who are rational and responsible and at the same time, compliant and consensual.

While the Race Against Waste campaign is primarily about encouraging personal ownership of the waste problem by challenging citizen's beliefs and behaviour, the governments approach to anti-bin tax protestors illustrates the underlying coercive nature of the individualisation of Irish waste management. As early as 1998, the government was indicating its desire to impose some form of domestic waste charges. (Dempsey, 1998: 10–11) Initial attempts to impose what became known as the ‘bin tax’ met with stout opposition from certain communities in Dublin and around the country. Protestors viewed the bin tax as increasing the financial burden on working people, citing the Polluter Pays Principle – ‘Industry and large-scale agriculture produce the vast majority of waste. They should pay to sort out the waste management crisis. We have paid our share already’. ¹⁶ In 2002, figures released showed the extent of opposition to the bin tax in the Dublin City Council area, with non-payment running at 75 per cent. ¹⁷ While local authorities were tasked with administering the charges, it was the government that imposed the coercive conditions necessary for implementing the policy, including the right to refuse to collect waste from payment defaulters ¹⁸ as well as empowering unelected officials rather than locally elected representatives to set the annual domestic charge for households. In a deeply acrimonious and bitter campaign, coercion became the order of the day. In September 2003, one local authority refused to collect waste from the homes of non-payers while another threatened non-paying households with fines of up to £1,900 (Sunday Business Post, 24 August 2003). The campaign reached a somewhat violent climax with the jailing of 18 campaigners between September and November 2003. Davies (2007) reports that the anti-bin tax campaign continues, ‘although actions tend to occur only when a threat of court action against an individual emerges’ (2007: 64).

Marginalising the sub-political: NIMBY and the sovereignty of right

Beck (1992) invests much in the prospect of the sub-political being the decisive element in delivering the requisite conditions for reflexive modernity. It is the zenith of the individualised society – where the legitimacy of traditional political institutions are challenged, leading to the development of new and effective structures of reflexive power. The sub-political, constituted largely from ‘the broad political activation of citizens’, science and the new morally responsible elements of the economic-technical sphere, is, according to Beck, ‘becoming a reality’ where ‘… heterogeneous centers of sub-politics have an effect on the process of politically forming and enforcing decisions, on the basis of utilized constitutional rights’ (1992: 194–5). In short, ‘a new political culture’ comes into being (Ibid: 194).

But how accurate is this description of ‘reality’? In the Irish waste context, it is a reading of the sub-political that obscures the domination and exercise of power, dramatically simplifying the relationship between the sub-political and more formal political structures. Opposition to government waste strategies do not generate adequate power in order to significantly alter the direction of waste management policy. Beck repeatedly points to the promise offered by this new political culture and the importance of ‘citizens initiative groups and social movements’, claiming that citizens would be ‘able to utilize all the media of public and legal control and consultation for the protection of their interests and rights’ (1992: 185). Yet, in the Irish experience of waste management, opponents to government policy have faced the prospect of legal sanction and just as crucially, oppositional actors and organisations are marginalised from decision-making processes. Research conducted into the governance processes associated with incineration shows that both NGOs and Irish community-based groups are at a severe disadvantage when entering into consultation mechanisms at EU, national and local levels, where key policy decisions are taken independently of the outcomes of these processes and where the industrial sector has considerably more lobbying resources at their disposal than even so-called ‘brand-name’ NGOs such as ‘Friends of the Earth’ (Murray, 2006b: 457–8).

Additionally, while the exclusion of one whole tier of governance from decision-making – in the case of locally elected representatives – might point to the demise of formal and centralised political power (a characteristic of industrial society), the ‘slack’ is not being taken up by reflexive discourses and agents, as Beck suggests. Instead, it can be argued with some justification that there is an increasing marginalisation of the voices of dissent, whether these voices emanate from formal or informal sites of political activity. The exercise of discursive power, the shaping of ‘truth regimes’ (Hunt and Wickham, 1994: 11) and the subsequent impact on practice all play central roles in determining ‘… the possibility of what gets included and excluded and of what gets done or remains undone …’ (Hunt and Wickham, 1994: 9). Government discourses on waste management represent the exercise of dominance through the preservation of the need to maintain economic competitiveness. These discursive practices, where power and knowledge are intertwined (Foucault, 1975: 27) generate an ‘ideology of right’, which permeates and dominates all levels of social relations – from policy-making to the self-regulation of citizens. Crucially, the ideology of right neutralises opposition where ‘sovereign power prohibits, confiscates, or destroys what sovereign judgement pronounces illegitimate’ (Rouse, 1994: 100). One result is that the definition of ‘legitimate grievance’ in relation to waste management can be narrowly determined by the government as administrative and technical issues, leaving other concerns to be conceptualised as unreasonable, irrational and selfish.

The marginalisation of potential opposition from the sub-political through the exercise of discursive power becomes a central issue here. Beck characterises the decision-making capacity of industrial society in the guise of a ‘wise man’ – ‘… whose rationality is not open to discussion and must be enforced even against the will and “irrational resistance” of subordinated agencies, interests and citizens’ groups' (1992: 191). However, the intransigence of the ‘wise man’ is still a force to be reckoned with, while the ‘irrational resistance’ towards incineration and super-dumps, is transposed into delegitimising discourses such as ‘NIMBY’ (Not in My Backyard). In the prelude to the removal of decision-making powers from locally elected representatives, the then Environment Minister, clearly irritated by opposition to government waste plans, accused local councillors of engaging in the ‘parish pump mentality’ of favouring local electoral popularity over national interests. He stated ‘I believe we have come to a point where we must shout “stop” to focus group politics and look towards unpopular possibilities if they are the right option.’ ¹⁹ Both government and local authority officials believed that community opposition to incineration and regional super-dumps was based largely on irrational self interest, a purely defensive posture towards any type of development – known as ‘BANANA’ (‘Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody’) for short. ²⁰ This rejection, out of hand, of developments includes, according to one Dublin City Council (DCC) official, any waste infrastructure, even those associated with recycling –

The NIMBY discourse is a key instance of an ideology of right. It is commonly deployed against local opposition groups ²² and plays a central role in defining such opposition as legitimate or otherwise. Invariably, the term serves to portray local opposition as ‘limited, selfish or irrational’ even when this opposition is just as concerned with far wider issues of ‘government spending, sustainability, community and democracy’ as it is with problematic instances of local development (Burningham, 2000: 57–8). While Rootes observes that the adoption of broader generalising discourses often amounts to a tactical move that seeks ‘to escape the limitations of NIMBY campaigns’ (2001: 20–1), Burningham makes the important argument that researchers themselves are culpable in contributing to the construction of local action as a negative discourse – either carelessly as ‘shorthand for local opposition’ or as a way of distinguishing ‘between those protestors and protests that can be labelled NIMBY and those the researcher considers to have more laudable social and/or environmental motivations’. (2000: 60). As a consequence, she suggests that the term should be not be attributed by researchers to specific groups (2000: 56).

Both local and national government officials are keen to portray resistance to plans to locate an incinerator at Poolbeg in Dublin as almost entirely baseless and NIMBYist. At the same time, residents from the nearby community of Ringsend rejected the accusation of self interest, pointing out that the locality had already done more than its ‘fair share’ in hosting waste infrastructure, including a landfill site, an unlicensed incinerator for hospital waste and currently, a sewerage works. Here the NIMBY label negates and dismisses past experience of waste installations. Summing up, one Member of Parliament for the area stated – ‘… NIMBYism in relation to the incinerator is not really on … its not NIMBYism, its [not] “not in my back garden”, my back yard is full in the Ringsend-Sandymount area …’. ²³

In addition, deploying the NIMBY discourse serves to portray opposition in narrowly defined terms of ‘quality of life’ issues, where objections of a more technical nature can be effectively ignored. This mirrors closely the attitude of the ‘technological elite’ in the Risk Society – ‘If the public only knew what the technical people know they would be at ease – otherwise they are hopelessly irrational’ (Beck,1992:58). However, the sovereignty of the NIMBY depiction of local opposition also ensures that any alternative technical discourses emerging from the sub political can just as easily be labelled as irrational and summarily dismissed. Members of the Ringsend community resisting the incinerator point out that they oppose any introduction of incineration into Ireland. It is the technology – not the location – that they campaigning against and as a result, have been involved in national and other locally-based anti-incineration campaigns. This view, they believe, is ‘lost’ in the debate over the Poolbeg incinerator, but it also a view expressed by a coalition of NGOs in a report that was commissioned by the Department of the Environment in 2001 (Waste working group, 2001).

On the face of it, the very fact that certain communities, activists and elected representatives are resisting the current Irish waste strategy would assume that at the very least, the potential for resistance exists in an emerging sub-political stratum. The arguments against incineration – that it is a danger to health and that it encourages increasing disposal of waste rather than prevention – are calls for a more reflexive approach to be adopted by the government and industry. In this respect, resistance is as much of a characteristic of power as is coercion or consent formation, underlining Foucault's belief that ‘… there are no relations of power without resistances …’ (Foucault, 1980: 142). The emphasis Foucault places on resistance in his later writings addresses a criticism levelled at his conceptualisation of power, in that power is ‘so ubiquitous and overwhelming that all resistance becomes pointless.’ (Pickett, 1996: 461) Part of this charge is that Foucault leaves little conceptual space for autonomous agency in his rendering of power, to the point that people are objectified as docile bodies (Foucault, 1975: 136). Yet, while the promise of resistance suggests a degree of ‘indeterminacy’, Pickett argues that such criticisms are ‘misguided’ and that the multi-dimensions of power offers multiple opportunities for resistance and that dominant discourses can be challenged and changed (1996: 461–2). Central to this is enabling subjugated voices and histories to be heard, whether this is alternative technical/scientific discourses on waste management or the Ringsend residents past experiences of having to live with waste infrastructure. From this perspective, resistance and the emergence of a viable sub-political entity is not merely a unintended consequence of risk (reflexivity) as Beck contends, but instead, involves the conscious actions of individuals and groups planning, collaborating and struggling against dominant discourses.

Conclusion

To conclude, this article has argued that Beck's conceptualisation of reflexivity and social transformation incorrectly rests on the premise of what Làrana refers to as a ‘persistent faith’ in the rationality of those involved in the reflexive modernisation project, which in turn, assumes ‘the existence of an inner logic of modernity’ (2001: 30). ²⁴ As a consequence, there are a number of assumptions made about the exercise of power and power relations there are somewhat ill-defined and unsubstantiated. It is suggested here that adopting aspects of Foucault's framework for power allows a more refined approach in the sociology of waste that can incorporate key factors that frame the waste issue in Ireland. This can account for the marginalisation of opposition and self-regulation through, for instance, processes of individualisation.

In suggesting this approach, it hoped that some of the contributing factors that prevent reflexivity from occurring in Irish waste management are identified. While acknowledging the particularity of this case, it is hoped too, that some of the arguments offered here can contribute to a more general critique of reflexive modernity. In more general terms, it was mentioned at the beginning of this discussion that Beck seems to hesitate in asserting whether reflexive modernisation is occurring now or is yet to emerge. This is a critical point, as the real transformation promised by reflexive modernity remains elusive and it is proposed here that a broader analysis of power might begin to explain this turn of events.