Microbes, chemicals and the health of homes: integrating theories to account for more-than-human entanglements

Wakefield-Rann, Rachael; Fam, Dena; Stewart, Susan

doi:10.1057/s41292-019-00147-7

Cited by 11 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Historical approaches have shown how hygiene norms, conventions, and standards change over time with developments in water supply and sewerage systems and the commodification of hygiene (Jack, 2018; Shove, 2003; Smith, 2007). In general cleanliness is becoming more resource consuming, not only in terms of water and energy (Shove, 2003), but also the increased commodification and disposability of hygiene practices through the use of single‐use products, and increasing rise of industrial chemicals used in its achievement (Wakefield‐Rann, Fam, & Stewart, 2019). Hygiene products, and they ways they are used, co‐evolve with emergent expectations and conventions, as well as modern lifestyles and rhythms, and flushability (as a marketable characteristic) emerged in the context of increasing commodification of single‐use hygiene products.…”

Section: Research Synthesis: Existing Research Gaps and Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Unflushables”: Establishing a global agenda for action on everyday practices associated with sewer blockages, water quality, and plastic pollution

2020

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The disposal of unflushable products via the toilet is an enduring problem and increasing contributor to environmental and infrastructural challenges such as fatbergs, water quality and plastic pollution. Rising scientific and public interest in “throw‐away” cultures, and renewed government pressure for water and sewerage companies to act as custodians of water resources, raises questions about how and why impactful disposal practices occur and what might be done to change them. To date there has been little systematic research on unflushable products, and little is known about the routines and practices through which unflushable products find their way into wastewater systems. This paper reviews social science research including historical, sociological, and anthropological studies of cleanliness and hygiene, as well as sociotechnical approaches to the study of household practices and infrastructures to understand the challenges of unflushables. Based on this research, the paper offers a new conceptualization of the unflushables challenge. We argue that unflushables are a distributed problem, one that is not the direct consequence of either individual behavior, product design or infrastructural decline, but the outcome of myriad social, cultural and material developments in society. These include diversity in “flushing” cultures, gendered expectations in cleanliness practices; the evolution of conventions around cleanliness and hygiene; infrastructural imaginaries and expectations; and political dimensions of infrastructural development and maintenance. We demonstrate how social science research is essential in defining a new global research agenda on unflushables that further aids the design of new intervention and policy pathways. This article is categorized under: Engineering Water > Sustainable Engineering of Water Science of Water > Water Quality

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Section: Research Synthesis: Existing Research Gaps and Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Unflushables”: Establishing a global agenda for action on everyday practices associated with sewer blockages, water quality, and plastic pollution

2020

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“…Tracing the composition of elemental worlds involves more than specifying the presence and circulation of different elements in the milieus of which these worlds consist. It also involves understanding exposure to the effects of this presence within and across the denizens, from humans to microbes, of elemental worlds (Greenhough et al, 2018; Wakefield-Rann et al, 2019). The question of exposure in relation to elemental worlds can and has often been framed in terms of toxicity (see Liboiron et al, 2018; Tironi, 2018).…”

Section: Elemental Worldsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elemental worlds: Specificities, exposures, alchemies

Engelmann

McCormack

2021

Progress in Human Geography

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The elements have become the focus of a significant volume of research by geographers and others. Engagements with the elements have been framed in terms of four elemental orientations: matter, molecule, milieu and media. Our aim is to consider what is at stake in efforts to think with, across and beyond these orientations. Avoiding any reduction of the elements to a single ontological or epistemological proposition, we explore possibilities for grasping their implication in the composition and decomposition of worlds. Doing this can be facilitated by thinking about these worlds in relation to three interrelated matters of concern: specificities, exposures and alchemies.

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“…If utilised well in the context of social and anthropological frameworks, epigenetic evidence has the capacity to make explicit the linkages between spatially and temporally distributed ecological processes, social inequalities and bodies. To do this effectively requires awareness of the relativity of the nature-culture divide, engagement with the complexity of transcending reductionism and avoidance of miniaturized versions of bodies and milieus (Lock and Palsson, 2016; Niewöhner 2011), Mobilizing epigenetics to show the unequal effects of toxic flows and exposures on different bodies and human groups can help make detectable the ‘slow violence’ of everyday pollution, racism and socio-structural inequalities, their disproportionate impact on the poor and potential impact on future generations (Liboiron et al, 2018; Nixon, 2011; Wakefield-Rann et al 2020).…”

Section: Conclusion: Bringing Bodies Togethermentioning

confidence: 99%

Bodies of the Anthropocene: On the interactive plasticity of earth systems and biological organisms

Meloni

Wakefield-Rann

Mansfield

2021

The Anthropocene Review

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The Anthropocene literature has brought attention to the plasticity and porosity of Earth systems under the dramatic impact of human activities. Moving across scales of analysis, this paper focuses attention on anthropogenic effects at the micro-scale of genomic regulation, neuronal functioning and cellular activity. Building on expanding dialogues at the interface of Anthropocene science, biogeography, microbiology and ecotoxicology, we mobilize epigenetic findings to show increasing evidence of anthropogenic changes in plants, animals and human bodies. Treating human-induced changes at the macro-global and micro-biological scales as part of an intertwined process has implications for how these problems are conceptualised and addressed. While we are sceptics about major geo-bio-social syntheses, we believe that agile social-scientific tools can facilitate interaction across disciplines without denying unevenness, and differences. If rightly contextualized in broad anthropological and social science frameworks, biosocial work on epigenetics offers a compelling avenue to make detectable the ‘slow violence’ of everyday pollution, racism, inequalities and the disproportionate impact of the Anthropocene on the poor and vulnerable. Consolidating work at the Anthropocene/biology interface has potential to offer a richer and more complete picture of the present crisis at the macro and micro-scale alike.

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Microbes, chemicals and the health of homes: integrating theories to account for more-than-human entanglements

Cited by 11 publications

References 66 publications

“Unflushables”: Establishing a global agenda for action on everyday practices associated with sewer blockages, water quality, and plastic pollution

“Unflushables”: Establishing a global agenda for action on everyday practices associated with sewer blockages, water quality, and plastic pollution

Elemental worlds: Specificities, exposures, alchemies

Bodies of the Anthropocene: On the interactive plasticity of earth systems and biological organisms

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