Black Wednesday: Radiation, stigma and property values

Abstract

In the 1970s the community of Port Hope, Ontario was discovered widely contaminated with radioactive waste from a local refinery. Under conditions of mounting waste, inadequate remediation, growing publicity, and no compensation, the implications of the waste for property values manifested into intense social conflict. The author traced these tensions over the last 40 years, showing how the primacy of private property disintegrated social relations while securing political and economic power for the state. Indeed, the state is actively involved in the institution of private property, not simply in regulating property markets and upholding property ownership as a de facto component of capitalism, but in manipulating its disciplinary effects as a form of social control.