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This powerful book examines the global asbestos industry's devastating impact on health, communities, and ecosystems, exposing how corporations and governments collaborate to silence victims while prioritizing profits. Drawing on research from Brazil and Italy, it reveals how race, gender and social privilege determine which harms are recognized and which are tolerated.
Grounded in Black feminist and decolonial thought, the book uses the asbestos industry as a lens to expose colonial male-dictions—narratives that shield powerful actors from accountability. Beyond a story of victims versus corporations, it offers a radical reimagining of state-corporate harm through memory and transformative justice.
'Budó’s study of state-corporate harm and Brazil’s asbestos industry breaks new theoretical ground as it employs the first decolonial and ecofeminist analysis.' Gregg Barak, author of Unchecked Corporate Power
'This book explores in depth the corporate crimes and harms involved in the asbestos industry in Brazil and Italy, and provides a powerful testimony of the victimisation and struggles for justice that followed the establishment of this industry. It is rich, both empirically and theoretically. I strongly recommend it as a must-read for any student or scholar interested in environmental crimes.' Ragnhild Sollund, University of Oslo
Introduction
1. Temporalities and Territorialities of the Asbestos Industry
2. Deterritorialising Time, Synchronising Territories
3. One Hundred Years of Denialism: Magic Realism of Modernity in Brazilian Internal Colonialism
4. Two Colonial Male-Dictions in Brazilian Asbestos Mining (1938-2025)
5. Suit and Tie: What Suits the Powerful, What Ties the People
6. The Old Lady and the Billionaire
Conclusion