Public sociology and the struggle against corporate environmental abuse in Africa

Corporate globalisation involves the increasing commodification and pollution of natural resources. As Hardt and Negri write, the frightening reality is “not that humans are changing nature but that nature is ceasing to be common,. That it is becoming private property and exclusively controlled by its new owners”. (Hardt and Negri, 2004:72) Increasingly the ‘new owners’ are powerful, multinational corporations, concerned largely with profit. Resistance to the environmental injustices this involves is increasing throughout Africa as evident in struggles against the commodification of water in Ghana, against the air and water pollution in the Vaal triangle of South Africa, against genetically modified food in Zambia, against large dams that threaten mass displacement in Namibia, Lesotho, Mozambique and Uganda, against deforestation to Kenya and against oil extraction practices in the Niger Delta, to cite a few examples. The paper argues the need for sociologists to join these struggles, to engage with the localised but globally connected social movements that are challenging the increasing social injustice and environmental degradation brought about by corporate globalisation.