PAŃSTWO I RYZYKO: POLITYKA KONTROLI ODDZIAŁYWANIA NA ŚRODOWISKO PODCZAS BUDOWY TUNELU WE WŁOSKICH ALPACH
RISK AND THE STATE: THE POLITICS OF ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT CONTROLS IN TUNNEL-BUILDING IN THE ITALIAN ALPS

Summary/Abstract: Drawing on practices of monitoring health-threatening air pollution levels in a tunnel construction project in the Italian Alps, in this article I address the relationship between risk and the state. ‘The state’ emerges in various shapes from the practices of environmental risk management. With Timothy Mitchell’s concept of ‘enframing’, I analyse how state institutions normalise risk through statistically defined thresholds of acceptable concentration of airborne pathogens. However, controversies arising around these air-quality monitoring practices, as described in a subsequent part of the article, challenged the image of the state as a structure organising the socio-material reality. A space was opened for a critique of the power relations that lay behind the notion of ‘the state’.

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