Firsting in Research
Declaring that a research is the “first” to discover, do, or go somewhere is not only rarely correct, given myriad local knowledges since time immemorial, but is also…
Tag: science and scientists
Not all marine fish eat plastics
The Gulf Stream, which curves along the southern shore of Newfoundland, is saturated with plastics. Fish that feed from the surface waters, where plastics tend to accumulate, are…
Science with heart
Conservation biologist Alex Bond on dealing with pollution, harm, and suffering as a scientist.
Against Risk Perception: The Deficit Model and Public Understandings of Risk
The deficit model frames public controversies about contamination as a lack of scientific understanding or trust in government institutions. People are seen as deficient in knowledge about an…
In space, this is the age of reusability
It might seem that the obvious solution is to reuse rockets. The idea of Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLVs) isn’t new, but reusing rockets has proven tricky in the…
Benzene, PCBs, and industrial chemistry: A narrative bibliography
How the Benzene Tree Polluted the World in The Atlantic by Rebecca Altman, is a narrative exploration of the rise of organic chemistry, and the industrialization of the branch of chemistry…
How we discovered pollution-poisoned crustaceans in the Mariana Trench
A trench amphipod, Hirondellea gigas, from the deepest place on Earth: Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench (10,890m). Alan Jamieson, Newcastle University, Author provided Alan Jamieson, Newcastle Un…
CPF: Shifting Baselines, Altered Horizons: Politics, Practice, and Knowledge in Environmental Science and Policy
Workshop – Call for Papers Shifting Baselines, Altered Horizons: Politics, Practice, and Knowledge in Environmental Science and Policy Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) Berlin…
Pristine paradise to rubbish dump: the same Pacific island, 23 years apart
Remember, this is not waste that was dumped directly by human hands. It was washed here on ocean currents, meaning that this is not just about one beach…
When Deep Time Becomes Shallow: Knowing Nuclear Waste Risk Ethnographically
When reflecting on these intertwined day-to-day, multi-decade, centurial, and multi-millennial horizons of nuclear waste risk all at the same time, a different set of sensibilities emerges. Namely, it…
Bibliography for Critical Ecology
Since ecological metaphors, systems, and thinking are implicit to much of discard studies, we’re happy to share this crowdsourced bibliography on critical perspectives of ecology.
CFP: Living and Dying with “Waste Infrastructure”: Affect and Practicalities (AAA)
This panel takes seriously the way of living or dying near the waste infrastructure, showing explicitly ethnographic inquiries of despair, anxiety, hope, and sense of purity, safety, and…
Building DIY citizen science technology to see invisible marine plastics
We’ve been working on the problem of making tiny, often invisible marine plastics visible through do-it-yourself (DIY) technologies. You can build your own and investigate your local environment.
Roundtable reviews of “Banned: A History of Pesticides and the Science of Toxicology”
If you’re interested in the history of pesticides and toxicology, Banned provides a detail-oriented, close reading of key 20th century experiments, legislative hearings, events, and texts to investiga…
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…
Plastic Marine Smog and Horizontal Smoke Stacks: Representations of Pollution as Knowledge
Representations are the basis of human knowledge both in terms of how knowledge is made as well as how it is reproduced and circulated. They are the way…
How the Ocean Cleanup Array Fundamentally Misunderstands Marine Plastics and Causes Harm
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The Ocean Cleanup array, designed to clean plastics from the ocean like a baleen whale, is one of these…