Cynthia Wang, Research Fellow, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick What you do with your money is your business, but when you begin to spend your money in my territory, that disrupts and destroys our way of life, our civilization, then that becomes my business. My investors, the water, the air, the medicine of the […]
ZHANG Yulin, Department of Sociology, Nanjing University As the ‘World Factory of 21st century’, China uses coal for 2/3 of its energy consumption. Large scale coal mine excavation—which constituted 3.97 billion tons in 2013—has caused serious ecological damage in rural China, with the most severe situation occurring in Shanxi Province. The recovery deposits and
Pamela Neumann, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Stone Center for Latin American Studies, Tulane University Lead is a controversial subject in the Peruvian town of La Oroya (population 30,000), which has the dubious distinction of being ranked one of the top ten most contaminated places in the world. Looking out at its scarred white hills today, it’s hard
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
Simona Grano, Department of Sinology, University of Zürich. In my professional capacity as academic, I work on industrial pollution issues in China and Taiwan (Grano, 2016/2015). I am so absorbed by the need to keep up with what happens in these two places, that I rarely pause to think about what has gotten me interested
India Holme, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick “When it comes to sustainability, 2016 will be a year of distraction, fear and disruption. Around the world, a host of economic and political threats – including the refugee crisis, terrorism and teetering markets in Europe and China – will continue to crowd headlines… long term environmental destruction is
Yvan Schulz, Anthropology, University of Neuchâtel Pick any media, artistic, activist, or academic account of discarded electrical and electronic devices (DEEDs) and there are good chances that toxics, environmental pollution and health risks figure prominently. E-waste, as DEEDs became known, reached the status of public problem in the early 2000s, when a number of non-governmental organizations
Becky Alexis-Martin, Research Fellow, Department of Geography, University of Southampton @CalamityCake Nuclear testing is often portrayed as a bombastic process, overshadowed by the devastating majesty of mushroom clouds and described in terms of annihilation or dramatic uncertainty. This is understandable, given the inherently destructive nature of nuclear weapons. However, my aim is not to sensationalise the
Dr Thom Davies, Research Fellow, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick: @ThomDavies In May 2016 we held the first annual workshop for the European Research Council-funded project ‘Toxic Expertise’. The two day event, funded by the ERC in conjunction with the Global Governance Global Research Priority (Warwick), was a big success and created some really
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