Creating a stink: Controversies over intensive poultry unit developments in Herefordshire and Shropshire: contested values, knowledge and experience

Caffyn, Alison 2020. Creating a stink: Controversies over intensive poultry unit developments in Herefordshire and Shropshire: contested values, knowledge and experience. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

This research explores the contested relations triggered by planning applications for intensive poultry units (IPUs) in Herefordshire and Shropshire. Using a threefold theoretical approach inspired by Actor Network Theory, Pragmatism and Phenomenology the research traces the values and concerns of the polarised networks of actors in both the agricultural sector and the new public which emerged to object to applications. I explore the knowledge constructed and deployed in the planning arena and the disconnects between scientific reports into predicted odour, noise and visual impacts and the lay knowledge and experiences of people in IPU localities. Tracing the relations within and between the groups of human and non-human actors reveals multiple uncertainties over IPU impacts, particularly cumulative water and air pollution and how tourism may be affected. Documentary analysis, interviews and meeting observations reveal how planning authorities have struggled to handle the increasing contestation within a policy vacuum and weakened institutional context. The longstanding agricultural hegemony is found to normalise intensive farming and colonise competing sectors. Objectors increasingly lack trust in technocratic planning processes and politicised decision-making. Mobilising ethnographic methods has enabled an exploration of the multi-sensory, material and emotional responses of people to industrial premises in rural settings and emergent associated surveillance and exclusion. The competing framings and rationalities at play in the situation are identified as objectors have begun to challenge scientised evidence and hold authorities to account. The research contributes new understandings of the little-researched UK intensive livestock production sector: how power relations have been enacted and begun to shift and the gradual slow violence and ecocide impacting multiple rural localities. I identify how governance structures could respond more effectively through acknowledging uncertainties, incorporating multiple perspectives and experiences and taking a more open and strategic approach to intensive livestock production.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	intensive poultry, livestock agriculture, planning contestation, power relations, uncertainty, experiential
Funders:	ESRC
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	26 January 2021
Last Modified:	19 Apr 2023 08:28
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/137927

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