Browsing by Author "Bergholm, Bea"

This is a study on the Flint water crisis and lead poisoning and its effects for the city residents. It focuses on the relationship between the locals and the state and explores how that relationship was formed and transformed during the crisis. It examines the historical and economic background of the water crisis, suggesting that the situation should be seen as a man-made disaster caused by the state of Michigan. The main research questions revolve around the twofold process of the state – citizen interaction and the state’s role in the crisis: How do the residents of Flint perceive the state during the water crisis? How did the city’s history of economic difficulties affect in the background of the water crisis’ emergence? This study contributes to the growing anthropological discussion about the role of the state and its governance, proposing a tragic example of what can happen when financial stability is placed above everything else, democratic decision-making disregarded and when the adopted neoliberal governance forms exacerbate local injustice and marginalization. The study also contributes to the discussions of water management, disasters and environmental injustice. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Flint, Michigan between February and April of 2018. It is based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews with locals, supplemented by following the local media, reading historical accounts and attending events in the city. The interviews were conducted with a total of 15 core research participants (8 male, 7 female) and they came from a variety of social and economic backgrounds. The thesis suggests that the residents perceive the state as an unjust force from the above, systematically disregarding the struggling city. They see the state as having a role of historically producing poverty, vulnerability and abandonment through economic mismanagement, deindustrialization and neoliberal policies. The residents blame the state for governing the city as if it was a business, thus focusing on cutting costs and placing economic interests above human safety. After the state adopted undemocratic policies such as emergency management and stripped the city of its voice, the residents lost their trust in the integrity of the officials and the protection the state is supposed to offer its citizens. This thesis demonstrates how a focus on state processes and state-citizen interaction can provide useful insights for understanding both natural and human-made disasters and the unequal living conditions produced by them.