Everyday Suffering and the Abstract Time-Reckoning of Law

Reflections on the Allocation of Responsibility for an Asbestos Disaster in Italy

Bibliographic Data

ID6015423
AuthorsDavid Loher (0000-0002-5672-5807, University of Bern, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume4
Issue2
Pages17-38
Publication date2020-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Legal Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1758-9584 • E-ISSN: 1758-9576
PublisherBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3167/jla.2020.040202
OpenAlexW3118553961
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited34

How does time structure the allocation of responsibility in the context of large-scale corporate crimes? Focusing on the Processo Eternit – a criminal case brought against the former main investor in Europe’s largest asbestos-processing factory in Casale Monferrato (Italy) – this article compares the temporal order of the lived experience of the asbestos disaster in the affected community with the abstract time-reckoning of law. The everyday suffering in the form of the long-term health effects, inscribed in the body through the asbestos fibre, collides with the statute of limitation of the alleged crimes, as stipulated in law and endorsed in the court room. It examines how these incommensurable temporalities reconfigure the allocation of moral and legal responsibility for an industrial disaster and shows how these contradictions are related to the victims’ expectations of justice and their experience of injustice

Context (archaeology · Economic Justice · Injustice · Inscribed figure · Political science · Sociology · Statute · Temporalities · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · History · Law · Regulation and Compliance Studies · Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses

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