Dr Calvin Jephcote, University of Warwick Petroleum has been the fuel for dramatic change in the twentieth century, as a source of energy it has revolutionised transport and powered technological advances, but as a chemical it has also enabled humankind to engineer synthetic environments. The petrochemical industry was initially created from the desire to commoditise … Continue reading Petrochemical Landscapes: A European Perspective
In this Special Issue of Toxic News we explore different ways of making pollution visible: Dr Thom Davies, Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick @ThomDavies The Hungarian photographer Robert Capa once said: ‘if your photographs are not good enough, you aren’t close enough’. He was a war photographer and famously captured … Continue reading Editorial: Toxic Visions – Photography and Pollution
Explore the unseen nature of Chernobyl with photographer Edward Thompson Dr Thom Davies, Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick @ThomDavies During my ethnographic research with communities in Chernobyl, Ukraine, a repeated theme during interviews was the invisibility of pollution. Often my research participants, who still live on land contaminated by the … Continue reading The Red Forest: Picturing Radiation with Infrared Film
Chernobyl inhabitants were given cameras to document their everyday lives Dr Thom Davies, Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick @ThomDavies The Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 was by many measures the worst environmental disaster in human history. Roughly ten times larger than the Fukushima accident that would lay waste to swathes of … Continue reading Disposable Citizens: viewing Chernobyl through the lens of those live there
Angeliki Balayannis, Doctoral Researcher, School of Geography, University of Melbourne. You can follow Angeliki on Twitter here. Encountering the kiln On a crisp autumn morning, a hazardous waste incineration facility in the industrial heart of southern Poland is in the process of burning medical waste at over 1100 degrees celsius. From the safety of a … Continue reading Encountering the kiln: visual field notes from an incinerator
Dr Deana Jovanović, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies of Southeastern Europe, University of Rijeka The smoke had its own character, and evoked a particular sentiment. Featured image: Bor, July 2015. Photo credit: Dragan Stojmenović The town of Bor is a copper-processing town in East Serbia that developed right “under the chimney”. The rundown smelting plant and the … Continue reading Heroic Endurance Under the Smoke: Ethnographic Notes from an Industrial Town in Serbia
Andy Bruno, Assistant Professor, Northern Illinois University Through a foggy bus window I began to make out the town amid the meager taiga landscape. It’d be fitting if the translucent layer of film distorting my view came from the plant’s pollution, but I doubt that was the case. As we rolled past a familiar scene … Continue reading Into a Frozen Inferno: Personal and Historical Trajectories in Monchegorsk
Dr Thom Davies, Research Fellow, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick @ThomDavies Around five years ago, I was in a village near Chernobyl. Bad Ukrainian electropop was hissing out of the car radio as we drove north towards the Exclusion Zone fence. I was frantically writing PhD research notes while we bumped along an uneven … Continue reading Editorial: Post-Atomic thoughts: Remembering Chernobyl and Fukushima
Professor Gabrielle Hecht is based at the Department of History at the University of Michigan, where she has also directed the Program in Science, Technology, and Society. She has authored several award winning books about ‘nuclear things’. My obsession with nuclear things began as a teenager. In 1978, my family moved to Zurich, where for … Continue reading Field Notes from a Nuclear Nerd
Dr Olga Kuchinskaya, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, University of Pittsburgh The main question about the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, as historian David Marples puts it, is “how many people did it actually affect through death, illness, or evacuation?” My book, The Politics of Invisibility: Public Knowledge about Radiation Health Effects after Chernobyl, suggests that … Continue reading On the Consequences of Chernobyl
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