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Contaminated Morals: the Struggle of Industrial Pollution in a Southern Italian City

Angelo Raffaele Ippolito (United Nations University – International Institute for Global Health) Bruno Andreas Walther (National Sun Yat-Sen University) Between 2017 and 2018, I carried out ethnographic fieldwork in the Southern Italian city of Taranto. Being from the city myself, I was aware of the ongoing struggle between a small group of active citizens and … Continue reading Contaminated Morals: the Struggle of Industrial Pollution in a Southern Italian City

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Editorial: Living with Toxicity in Greater China: Realities and Reactions

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

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Sacrificing and Saving the Environment: The Case of Shanxi

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

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Is Tap Water in China Safe to Drink? A Water Quality Inspector’s Perspectives

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

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Plastic China: Sorting Plastic, Sorting People

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

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‘Village Besieged’: An Elegy for Victims and Protest Against Taiwan’s Petrochemical Pollution

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

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Editorial: Measuring and monitoring in complex times – the case of air pollution

Thomas Verbeek and Calvin Jephcote, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick Air pollution is increasingly seen as a major public health issue, with new research outputs covered by international organisations and the national media every few weeks. The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that “clean air is a basic requirement of human health and well-being”. … Continue reading Editorial: Measuring and monitoring in complex times – the case of air pollution