Alice Mah, Professor of Sociology, University of Warwick I have been researching the petrochemical industry for more than five years now. Day in and out, this behemoth industry, with its toxicity, controversies, and sprawling network of activities around the globe, has been looming in the back of my mind. Whenever I am gripped by an … Continue reading Special Issue: Making the Petrochemical Connection
Loretta Lou, University of Macau / London School of Economics Even though it is becoming more and more common for musicians to take on the issue of environmental degradation in the age of Anthropocene, to produce an album about a particular kind of toxic pollution is literally unheard-of until Taiwanese indie rock band Sheng-Xiang & … Continue reading ‘Village Besieged’: An Elegy for Victims and Protest Against Taiwan’s Petrochemical Pollution
Dr Cynthia Wang, Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, UK The issue of realizing the right to information is far greater than one hazardous substance. Baskut Tuncak, UN Special Rapporteur (2015) The shocking series of explosions at a hazardous goods warehouse occurred at the night of 12 August 2015, but since then Tianjin … Continue reading A Reflection on the Tianjin Explosions
Loretta Lou, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick Decades of unrestrained development has led to some serious environmental problems in China and Taiwan today. While sustainable development and effective enforcement of pollution control remain a challenging task for both governments, we begin to see a variety of creative responses from the bottom-up. In this Toxic … Continue reading Editorial: Living with Toxicity in Greater China: Realities and Reactions
Yu-Rong Joy Liu, University of Arizona, Tucson Sitting across a tea table in the living room, a local official shared her thoughts on my question about Shanxi Province’s image as a coal producing province in people’s mind: “You should write about how we overcome air pollution, and that the sky is so much clearer than … Continue reading Sacrificing and Saving the Environment: The Case of Shanxi
Lu Zhijian 陸志堅 Technical Director of Guangzhou New Life Environment Protection Promotion Association, Former Water Quality Inspector and Project Manager of Lau Kai Conservation Access to safe and clean water is essential to human health. However, public concern over drinking water safety has risen sharply in recent years following a number of water pollution incidents. … Continue reading Is Tap Water in China Safe to Drink? A Water Quality Inspector’s Perspectives
Adam Liebman, Stanford University Plastic China (2016) begins with a cargo ship pulling into Tsingdao Harbor in northern China, where shipping containers are mechanically loaded onto trucks. The documentary picks up the trail of one shipping container headed for rural Shandong Province. As the truck drives into a village, the film’s only scene-setting caption reads: … Continue reading Plastic China: Sorting Plastic, Sorting People
Loretta Lou, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick Even though it is becoming more and more common for musicians to take on the issue of environmental degradation in the age of Anthropocene, to produce an album about a particular kind of toxic pollution is literally unheard-of until Taiwanese indie rock band Sheng-Xiang & Band released … Continue reading ‘Village Besieged’: An Elegy for Victims and Protest Against Taiwan’s Petrochemical Pollution
Read an interview and photo essay about Chih Chiu’s thought provoking work Dr Thom Davies, Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick @ThomDavies Some photographers and artists simply document pollution. They bare witness to the many social injustices that toxicity produces. In that witnessing there is the hope, at least, that opinions … Continue reading Voyage on the planet: contemplating pollution with Chih Chiu
Featured Image: In front of the Taipei High Court, 27 October 2017. On the banners: “Another victory [for the plaintiffs]! Now pay compensation!” “Regrets” [for victims already deceased] Photo: Jung-lung Chang Paul Jobin, Hsin-hsing Chen, Yi-ping Lin[1] In her last editorial in Toxic News, Alice Mah raised the importance of translation in issues of environmental justice. … Continue reading Translating Toxic Exposure: Taiwan RCA
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