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Demolitions, Housing, and Environmental Justice: A Toxic News Interview with a Community Activist in Hillfields, Coventry

India Foster, Project Administrator, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, UK Background In 2004, Andy McGeechan led a local residents’ campaign to save twelve blocks of flats from demolition in a West Midlands city in the UK. Andy was and still is a resident of the North Coventry area of Hillfields which is located next to … Continue reading Demolitions, Housing, and Environmental Justice: A Toxic News Interview with a Community Activist in Hillfields, Coventry

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Mapping the Toxic Remnants of War

Featured Image: A UNEP investigator assesses dozens of storage vessels for the toxic, carcinogenic and explosive missile fuel dimethylhydrazine that were abandoned by Soviet forces at a helicopter and scud missile base near Astana in Afghanistan. Credit: UNEP. Doug Weir, Toxic Remnants of War Project  Armed conflict can generate significant levels of environmental pollution and … Continue reading Mapping the Toxic Remnants of War

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“We want to Know what we’re Breathing”: Cement Factories and Contested Environmental Illness in Minas, Uruguay

Dr Daniel Renfrew, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, West Virginia University, USA. In 2011 residents of the small Uruguayan city of Minas (pop: 40,000) identified a disturbing trend. Loved ones, neighbors, and above all, children, adolescents and young adults, were coming down at seemingly alarming rates with various kinds of cancer- “strange cancers,” … Continue reading “We want to Know what we’re Breathing”: Cement Factories and Contested Environmental Illness in Minas, Uruguay

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The Petrochemical Complex as a Unit of Reference in Considering Companies’ Relationships with the Local Community

Miguel Ángel López-Navarro, Department of Business Administration and Marketing, Universitat Jaume I, Castelló, Spain My approach to studying the petrochemical industry, from a management perspective, is rooted in an interest in assessing how economic and environmental dimensions interact through the lens of the local community, in a petrochemical complex located in Castellón (Spain) a few … Continue reading The Petrochemical Complex as a Unit of Reference in Considering Companies’ Relationships with the Local Community

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The Berdichev Leather Factory in the Wake of the Chernobyl Accident

Professor Kate Brown, Professor of History, Department of History, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), USA This sentence in a document sent to Kiev a few months after the Chernobyl accident could read as criminal: “In the month of May [1986], the meat factories of Zhitomir, Korosten’, and Novograd-Volynsk processed livestock received from the 30-km zone … Continue reading The Berdichev Leather Factory in the Wake of the Chernobyl Accident

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U.S. Oil Refineries Required to Monitor Ambient Air Toxics: A victory, with limits, for neighbouring communities

Dr Gwen Ottinger, Assistant Professor, Department of Politics, Drexel University, USA The EPA refinery rule thus marks a major victory in community groups’ decades-long struggle for ambient air monitoring at refinery fence lines… but without a way to translate new air quality information into action, communities risk being overwhelmed by data. On September 29, 2015, … Continue reading U.S. Oil Refineries Required to Monitor Ambient Air Toxics: A victory, with limits, for neighbouring communities

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Toxic Life? The Slow Violence of refugee abandonment

Dr Thom Davies, Research Fellow, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, UK @ThomDavies “The single most important challenge to the safety and protection of refugees arises from populist politics and toxic public debates” – Volker Türk, UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Protection (UN 2015) While conducting research this summer in the so-called ‘new Jungle’ in … Continue reading Toxic Life? The Slow Violence of refugee abandonment

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A Reflection on the Tianjin Explosions

Dr Cynthia Wang, 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 have … Continue reading A Reflection on the Tianjin Explosions

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Toxic Struggle and Corporate Paradox in a High-Tech Industrial Birthplace

Dr Peter C. Little, Assistant Professor, Anthropology Department, Rhode Island College, USA A three hour drive northwest of New York City, in the Empire State’s Southern Tier region, is the small community of Endicott. Nestled along the Susquehanna River, it is known as the “Birthplace of IBM.” International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)—born of a marriage between the … Continue reading Toxic Struggle and Corporate Paradox in a High-Tech Industrial Birthplace