# When sociality fails to produce solidarity: environmental NGOs and the politics of public engagement in contemporary China

## TL;DR

The paper explores how an environmental NGO in China struggles to build solidarity against chemical pollution, highlighting the importance of emotional engagement over formal participation.

## Contribution

It introduces the concepts of chemosolidarity and ecosolidarity to better understand community engagement in environmental advocacy.

## Key findings

- Chemosociality alone fails to explain uneven community engagement in environmental advocacy.
- Emerald's efforts to build chemosolidarity were unsuccessful, but they fostered ecosolidarity through shared appreciation of nature.
- Emotional participation is crucial for understanding environmental justice and advocacy complexities.

## Abstract

This article examines the potentials and limitations of the concept of “chemosociality” (Shapiro and Kirksey, Cultural Anthropology 32:481–493, 2017) through a case study of Emerald, an environmental NGO addressing pollution in China’s chemical industry. Based on fieldwork and online research conducted since 2016, the article explores how chemosociality provides a lens to move beyond binary views of a homogeneous frontline community battling against toxic industries. However, it argues that chemosociality alone is insufficient to account for the unevenness of community engagement in environmental advocacy. Drawing on Bradley’s concept of biosolidarity (Bradley, Anthropology & Medicine 28:543–557, 2021), the article introduces chemosolidarity and ecosolidarity to highlight Emerald’s efforts to foster public participation. While Emerald’s attempts to cultivate chemosolidarity were unsuccessful, they nurtured ecosolidarity, grounded in a shared appreciation of nature. This example underscores the need to differentiate between sociality and solidarity and to pay attention to affective rather than effective participation to gain a more nuanced understanding of environmental justice and the complexities of toxicity and environmental advocacy.