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A Rural Community's Mobilization and Media Strategies in Response to a Contested Infrastructural Project

A Rural Community's Mobilization and Media Strategies in Response to a Contested Infrastructural Project

Liam James Leonard (Arden University Manchester, UK)
Copyright: © 2023 |Pages: 20
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-9668-5.ch011
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Abstract

The chapter will examine the mobilization and social media response of a rural community in Ireland to the imposition of a gas pipeline on their farms, in the western coastal region of that jurisdiction. This analysis will include a discussion of the concept of ‘rural sentiment' as a factor in the mobilization of community campaigns against infrastructural projects which are perceived as a threat to existing ways of life in regional areas. The chapter will also explore key theoretical concepts for this community-based responses to environmental degradation in rural areas, including critical criminology, green criminology rural criminology and resource curse theory and ask whether the campaign was ecopopulist, with issues of social and environmental justice at its core. The ‘crime' here was in relation to the disruption of nature and community life in a rural area by a corporate entity, backed by the state. The case analysis will be achieved through a case study approach.
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Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework for this chapter will include the perspectives of Green Criminology, Critical Criminology and Rural Criminology. Critical Criminology provides a critique based on the political economy of a rural community which opposed corporate and state entities during the gas pipeline dispute. It also allows for a critique of the oppressive manner in which the Irish criminal justice system was used against the community protest group which emerged in resistance to the pipeline and development. Green Criminology and Rural Criminology provides scope for a rural perspective on this dispute, based on the potential for the degradation of a rural community and its environment due to the pipeline and installation development. The rural community in the County Mayo of Ireland has fought for recognition of community rights since the Land League agitation of the late 1800s, and many involved in the gas pipeline dispute feel they are continuing in a local tradition of community rights advocacy.

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