Working Life, Industrial Loyalty, and Environmental Degradation in Small-Town Finland, 1950s–1980s

Abstract This article analyses industrial working-class life narratives of the 1950s to 1980s, during a time of increasing air and water pollution in Imatra, a Finnish industrial pulp and paper mill town. Many residents worked for either Enso-Gutzeit, not only the largest local employer but also Europe’s largest pulp and paper mill, or the hydropower plant, in a variety of maintenance and production roles. Using oral histories concerning working life, the article considers the sensory experiences of pollution that individuals and communities witnessed and committed. In order to protect their community, silence was used as a form of nonverbal communication for much of the post-war period to convey tolerance of environmental degradation and ecological collapse. The impacts of pollution are invisible today, which creates a unique oral history that blends past and present environmental knowledge. Informants use silences, sentences lacking subjects, laughter to communicate nonverbal embarrassment, and repetitions to share thoughts they find uncomfortable or those they consider shameful. As a microhistory of an industrial community, this study reveals how and why residents performed an acceptance of pollution by examining the at times contradictory relationship between sensory experiences of air and water pollution.