Pollution is Colonialism
Colonialism in Canada is an ongoing structure whereby settler society and government assert sovereignty over lands already occupied by Indigenous peoples.
Tag: Difference: Class, Race, Gender
Cleaning up toxic sites shouldn’t clear out the neighbors
Notions of “sustainability” and “urban greening” ought to include values of justice and equity. Otherwise, important projects like the Blue Greenway will build sustainable waterfronts for the urban…
Community Responses to Toxic Hazards: A Reading List
A reading list of the David and Goliath story of communities versus industries, governments, and polluting infrastructures.
On (not) seeing artificial light at night: Light pollution or lighting poverty?
By Dr. Sara B. Pritchard Department of Science & Technology Studies, Cornell University So it began. This was the image that sparked my interest in light pollution and light-pollution…
Difference in the Anthropocene: Indigenous Environmentalism in the Face of Settler Colonialism
Both Todd and Whyte argue that achieving climate justice for and by Indigenous people requires addressing the ways in which global environmental change is intimately connected with— and…
Victory at Standing Rock reflects a failure of US energy and climate policy
Stopping the pipeline in one spot, after all, won’t stop oil altogether. Climate change, however, is a threat most of all to Indigenous peoples around the world.
Fracking, mining, murder: the killer agenda driving migration in Mexico and Central America
Why negotiate with poor Indigenous communities sitting atop valuable oil, water, wood and ore if they can be pushed off their land with hidden criminal, political and misogynistic…
More boys are diagnosed with cancer than girls worldwide – why?
The factors that lead to gender differences in cancer rates all affect us later in life, and should not apply to children. Yet the present data shows that…
Why it’s easier for India to get to Mars than to tackle its toilet challenge
In 2013, India became the fourth country in the world (after Russia, the United States and the European Union) and the only emerging nation to launch a Mars…
CFP: Queer/Crip Contagions
This special issue asks: how are queer/crip contagions – conceived of as unbounded convergences of bodies, minds, and meanings – working to open up new sites of, and…
In Trump’s America, 72% of the population is disposable
What does that mean? As an affront to order, it means we are pollution. It means we must be aggressively ignored, ordered, or erased. We know this. This…
On Solidarity and Molecules (#MakeMuskratRight)
Deferring to molecules rather than social movements when it comes to contamination is a case of power relations.
Ethnographic Refusal: A How to Guide
Refusal is a method whereby researchers and research participants together decide not to make particular information available for use within the academy. Here are some strategies for identifying…
A Bibliography for Teaching Flint
This bibliography is designed for professors who want to “teach Flint” in their classrooms. The Flint, Michigan water crisis is an extreme but quintessential case study that shows…
Drawing the Invisible: An interview with the illustrator for the Radiation Monitoring Project
Communicating invisible threats is an area of interest in discard studies because it requires distilling and articulating the ideas that matter most in our concepts of contamination and…
Reconciliation’s Waste: heritage and waste in post-apartheid South Africa
Portable toilets and urine on colonial era statues are reconciliations ruins, the things leftover that heritage helps to frame but yet cannot fully explain. As matter that remains…
Thompson on Sills, ‘Toxic War: The Story of Agent Orange’
The use of the defoliant Agent Orange by the United States is one of the most controversial actions of the Vietnam War. InToxic War: The Story of Agent…
CFP: Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on the Environment
Chapter proposals are invited for the edited book Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on the Environment, due by May 15, 2016. This volume will explore the intersection between transgender studies…
Refusal as Research Method in Discard Studies
Ethnographic refusal is a practice by which researchers and research participants together decide not to make particular information available for use within the academy. Its purpose is not…
Toxic Symposium on Exposure, Entanglement, and Endurance: A Summary in Tweets
Toxics: A Symposium on Exposure, Entanglement, and Endurance was heralded as “the most important conversation on body burdens yet.” See the Twitter version of that conversation here.
Piping as poison: the Flint water crisis and America’s toxic infrastructure
Over the past few decades, we have met with much success in curbing some of Americans’ exposure to lead. Yet they have struggled to contain this continuing danger…
CFP for “Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on the Environment”
This volume seeks to provide novel insights into ecological and environmental issues by drawing on specifically transgender perspectives. Deadline for abstracts: March 1, 2016.
Which came first: people of colour or pollution?
A pair of new publications focus on the “chicken or egg” question in environmental justice: Are present-day disparities around hazardous sites the result of a pattern of placing…
Toxic Politics: A Collection of Research Projects
The global economy produces pervasive contaminants, harmful pollutants, damaging particles, and poisonous atmospheres, which are inescapably part of everyday life, though the harms and benefits are un…