Environmental Justice and Oil Industry: Violence Against Human and Non-human Entities as Represented in Abdelrahman Munif’s Cities of Salt

Abstract

People in the Arab World look at the revenues and financial benefits of oil, but they forget the negative effects of it on the environment and the values, traditions, and practices of local communities. This paper sheds much light on the plight of the local communities as a result of so-called development which takes place at the expense of nature. The paper shows the resistance of the natives to superimposed unhealthy changes, but at the same time it acknowledges that reasonable and gradual change is a necessity as long as it does not lead to the destruction of nature and those who subsist on it.

Keywords: oil, resistance, nature, development, destruction.