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The challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis for human-animal relations

Nickie Charles – Centre for the Study of Women and Gender, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick nickie.charles@warwick.ac.uk According to Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, the COVID-19 pandemic ‘is a direct warning that nature can take no more’ and that ‘humanity’s destruction of nature’ must stop (Andersen, 2020). In Jane Goodall’s … Continue reading The challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis for human-animal relations

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A pandemic of water privatization: Poverty and lack of water in Chile

Maria Christina Fragkou – Hydrofeminist collective La Gota Negra/ Department of Geography, University of Chile mariac.fragkou@uchilefau.cl Chile is globally renowned for its neoliberal politics, imposed during the military dictatorship between 1973 and 1990, and the implications these have had on water management, crystallised in the infamous Chilean Water Code that has been studied extensively by … Continue reading A pandemic of water privatization: Poverty and lack of water in Chile

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Editorial: South America, or the lost Paradise

Patricio Flores Silva- Department of Sociology, University of Warwick. patricio-ignacio.flores-silva@warwick.ac.uk After discovering ‘the new world’, European conquerors felt deeply impressed by its natural richness. Given the majesty of its forests, the unlimited fruits provided by its trees, the fertility of its virgin valleys, the Americas, in general, and South America, in particular, were assumed as … Continue reading Editorial: South America, or the lost Paradise

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‘El aire está malo’: Living with toxics in a Chilean sacrifice zone

Efren Legaspi, Citizen of Horcón (V Region of Valparaíso, Chile)/Universidad de Sevilla. efrenlb@gmail.com ‘El aire está malo’ (‘the air feels bad´) is a common expression among people from the Quintero-Puchuncaví bay (V Region of Valparaíso, Chile), who must deal with the atmospheric emissions generated by the industrial complex Ventanas on a daily basis. In the … Continue reading ‘El aire está malo’: Living with toxics in a Chilean sacrifice zone

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Living and resisting with agrotoxics in their blood: Struggles for health and environmental rights against sprayings and agrobiofuels pollution in the heart of the Argentinian agribusiness

Mauricio Berger, PhD, Social Sciences, Associate Researcher, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Associate Professor Instituto de Investigación y Formación en Administración Pública, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina (IIFAP, FCS, UNC). mauricio.berger@unc.edu.ar Cecilia Carrizo, Msc, Public Administration, Associate Professor, Instituto de Investigación y Formación en Administración Pública, Facultad de … Continue reading Living and resisting with agrotoxics in their blood: Struggles for health and environmental rights against sprayings and agrobiofuels pollution in the heart of the Argentinian agribusiness

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Living with lead in Uruguay

Daniel Renfrew- Department of Sociology and Anthropology, West Virginia University daniel.renfrew@mail.wvu.edu Lead poisoning, the disease of antiquity and the twentieth century’s “mother of all industrial poisons” (Markowitz and Rosner, 2002), continues to haunt and cover the earth. Lead is a legacy pollutant of America’s toxic infrastructure, found in the cracked and peeling paints of old … Continue reading Living with lead in Uruguay

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Mine tailings and enviromental (dis)controls in a Brazilian coastal area

Eliana S. J. Creado – Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil[1] eliana.creado@gmail.com When we started to study the possibilities of sociotechnological disasters (see Zhouri et al., 2017) in a fishery village, called Regência Augusta, at Espírito Santo State, Brasil, where Doce River meets the Atlantic Ocean, we were thinking about something related to oil or … Continue reading Mine tailings and enviromental (dis)controls in a Brazilian coastal area

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Making Mercury History: Toxic Assets and Neocolonial Extraction

Ruth Goldstein- Department of Global and International Studies, University of California, Irvine. ruth.goldstein@uci.edu (See below for Spanish translation) “In the neocolonial alchemy, gold changes into scrap metal and food into poison.” Exiled Uruguayan scholar Eduardo Galeano writes about toxic neocolonial alchemies in the first pages of The Open Veins of Latin America (Las Venas Abiertas … Continue reading Making Mercury History: Toxic Assets and Neocolonial Extraction

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Editorial: Mapping and Making Petrochemical Connections on a Global Level

Lorenzo Feltrin, University of Warwick. In the summer of 1994, the petrochemical worker Gabriele Bortolozzo – employed for decades in Porto Marghera’s VCM-PVC plants – met Public Prosecutor Felice Casson in his office at the Court of Venice. Bortolozzo, supported by the association Medicina Democratica, was there to submit a complaint against the Italian companies … Continue reading Editorial: Mapping and Making Petrochemical Connections on a Global Level

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Iran’s Petrochemical Industry: A Disaster Zone of Precarity and Pollution

Peyman Jafari, Princeton University & International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam). During the last two decades, Iran has developed a significant petrochemical sector. Whenever it makes headlines, however, the reason is often international politics. In June 2019, for instance, the Trump administration imposed severe sanctions on the Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company (PGPIC) due to … Continue reading Iran’s Petrochemical Industry: A Disaster Zone of Precarity and Pollution