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"Little, Peter C"
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Toxic Town
p strongShows the risks of high-tech pollution through a study of an IBM plant's effects on a New York town/strong In 1924, IBM built its first plant in Endicott, New York. Now, Endicott is a contested toxic waste site. With its landscape thoroughly contaminated by carcinogens, Endicott is the subject of one of the nation's largest corporate-state mitigation efforts. Yet despite the efforts of IBM and the U.S. government, Endicott residents remain skeptical that the mitigation systems employed were designed with their best interests at heart. In emToxic Town/em, Peter C. Little tracks and critically diagnoses the experiences of Endicott residents as they learn to live with high-tech pollution, community transformation, scientific expertise, corporate-state power, and risk mitigation technologies. By weaving together the insights of anthropology, political ecology, disaster studies, and science and technology studies, the book explores questions of theoretical and practical import for understanding the politics of risk and the ironies of technological disaster response in a time when IBM's stated mission is to build a \"Smarter Planet.\" Little critically reflects on IBM's new corporate tagline, arguing for a political ecology of corporate social and environmental responsibility and accountability that places the social and environmental politics of risk mitigation front and center. Ultimately, Little argues that we will need much more than hollow corporate taglines, claims of corporate responsibility, and attempts to mitigate high-tech disasters to truly build a smarter planet./p
eBook
Global Electronic Waste, Third Party Certification Standards, and Resisting the Undoing of Environmental Justice Politics
This article provides a critical assessment of a shift in discourse and political actions taken by the Basel Action Network (BAN), the primary non-governmental organization involved in overseeing and regulating the international trade in hazardous wastes in general and electronic waste (e-waste) in particular. First, we review recent scholarship focused on changes in social movement tactics that more directly target corporate practices, specifically the rise of voluntary third party certification standards. In particular, we attend to early efforts of the global environmental justice movement to address the trade in hazardous wastes, including e-waste. Next, we discuss our research findings on the changes in discourse, strategy, and political demands of environmental justice activists engaged in e-waste recycling. These findings support other recent case studies that suggest that the development of voluntary third party certifications adopt neoliberal market logics and corporate governance practices. In addition, our findings also more explicitly consider how changing discourse—in this case, a shift from exploitation to expertise—transforms political strategies and undercuts environmental justice approaches to global e-waste politics. As engaged social scientists and e-waste activists working against neoliberal intrusion, we argue that resistance to these transformations is a matter of de-economizing the systemic expansion and efficiency management practices conditioning the contemporary global e-waste trade and the strategic greenwashing of e-waste recycling. We further argue that developing interventions in e-waste management and policy based on ethical principles of global environmental justice is a critical step forward for applied social science engagements with emerging e-waste studies.
Journal Article
Another Angle on Pollution Experience: Toward an Anthropology of the Emotional Ecology of Risk Mitigation
Environmental contamination is socially experienced as environmental suffering, bodily distress, frustration, and even pain. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of a contaminated community in New York, I engage the complex and variegated ways in which angst, frustration, and uncertainty linger even after state and corporate scientific schemes to mitigate environmental disaster and contamination are initiated. Inspired by emerging discussions of \"emotional geography,\" I explore how in a sociospatial context where residents live in homes mitigated for intrusive toxic substances, frustration, and uncertainty—both frequent problems experienced by residents living in environments threatened by hazardous substances—continue to inform the pollution experience. Moreover, I address how ethnographic narrative exposes what I call the \"emotional ecology of risk mitigation.\"
Journal Article
Environmental Justice Ethnography in the Classroom: Teaching Activism, Inspiring Involvement
In this era of industry deregulation, gutting of environmental protections, and science denial, environmental justice applied anthropology is more important than ever. There is growing ethnographic research into the ways people organize themselves and take action to protect their families and communities from toxins while demanding accountability from polluting industries and the state. When students encounter this literature in university curricula and when service-learning projects are part of coursework, the experiences they gain can inform their personal lives long after the semester ends. Five anthropologists share experiences teaching environmental justice ethnography courses. Their pedagogy addresses critical questions of ethical research and student positionality.
Journal Article
Vapor Intrusion: The Political Ecology of an Emerging Environmental Health Concern
This article explores the role of ethnography and political ecology theory amid an emerging environmental public health debate: vapor intrusion. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines vapor intrusion as the migration of volatile organic compounds from a contaminated groundwater source into overlying buildings. Like many other environmental health risks, vapor intrusion debates invoke particular socioenvironmental politics and expose complex and variegated negotiations with science, expertise, and policy. First, I expose the perceptions and experiences of scientists and regulators engaged in contemporary vapor intrusion (VI) debates. Next, I draw on ethnographic data from a community case study of residents' struggles and understandings of vapor intrusion and public health risk at an industrial hazardous waste site in Endicott, New York. This is followed by a discussion of the value of the political ecology of health perspective and its potential for informing yet another emerging environmental health problem.
Journal Article
Negotiating Community Engagement and Science in the Federal Environmental Public Health Sector
In this case study, I use ethnographic data to explore how community engagement and science are deployed at the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, with the goal of formulating an understanding of the personalized meanings of science-community relations for key environmental public health experts. In focus is the cultural discourse circulating in the agency that exposes the real concerns, beliefs, and attitudes of these scientists and experts vis-à-vis their community engagement experiences. Finally, I propose that critical attention to the place of power relations, knowledge politics, and environmental justice are fundamental to studies of toxic contamination where commitments to community engagement and quality science are joined to form a positive research goal and where attempts are made to improve the conditions of quality environmental public health service.
Journal Article
