ANTROPOLOGIA APPLICATA E INQUINAMENTO INDUSTRIALE A BRINDISI. PROBLEMI E NESSI DA RICONFIGURARE

Brindisi is a city in the South-east of Italy with high industrial density - two coal-fired power plants and a large petrochemical complex - and a high percentage of cancer deaths with an excess of a lung cancer. The coal power plants pollution as well as that of petrochemical complex is considered as the main cause of diseases and deaths by the local doctors union and some social movements. However this report is constantly negotiated and redefined by the parties involved (energy companies, lawyers, doctors, local social movements, politicians, researchers) in a very articulate public health field, that involves different localglobal spheres of public, politic, professional and private life, in which power relations and highly emotional contrasts define the position of many social actors. The essay is based on an ethnography started in 2009 and still in progress, focused on the relationship between pollution and disease in Brindisi. I will propose two lines of analysis which are strictly related. An ethnographic reflection on negotiation form and practices of categories and values as “right to health”, “sick of coal”, “public health”, "medical authority” inside a cause-effect relationship between pollution and disease. I will also try to reflect on the Anthropologist operative position and the applicative chance of his research within the conflictual public health field.