Toxic Truths: Environmental Justice and Citizen Science in a Post-Truth Age

Abstract

List of figures vii List of tables viii List of contributors ix Acknowledgments xii List of abbreviations xiii Introduction: Tackling environmental injustice in a post-truth age -

Toxic Heritage

“…However, what distinguishes the place attachment in Samtilwei from the place attachment observed in cases of deindustrialization (Strangleman 2001;Stephenson and Wray 2005; Emery 2020; Rhodes II, Walker, and Price 2020; Garrow 2021) and cases of environmental justice (Allen 2003;Davies and Mah 2020) is that toxic contamination has never been the driving force for changes and actions in Samtilwei. For one, people in China tend to downplay the health impact of toxic pollution (Tilt 2006;Lora-Wainwright 2009;Mah and Wang 2017;Lou 2022).…”

A Research Agenda for Geographies of Slow Violence

“…It must be recognised that the 'belated casualties' (Nixon 2011, 14) of the climate's slow collapse were not, are not, and will not be evenly distributed and experienced. Instead, like other kinds of environmental injustice, they are tethered to the structural inequalities of society, and will be felt most acutely by the poor, the marginalised, and the "epistemically-ignored" (Davies and Mah 2020). What role, therefore, does time play in already-polluted places; communities for whom anthropogenically altered environments are not a forthcoming geological threat but an actually existing present?…”

Theorising liminal states of health: A spatio‐temporal analysis of undiagnosis and anticipatory diagnosis in the shadow of toxic pollution

“…This paper contributes to growing scholarship on toxic geographies. Within this vibrant field, geographers have examined the gradual and slow brutalities of toxic pollution across time and space (Davies, 2018, 2019; Nixon, 2011), intimate relations between toxicity, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism (Bagelman & Wiebe, 2017; Nunn, 2018; Vasudevan, 2021), the constitutive role of gender and toxicity in the expression of biopolitics (Mansfield, 2012a, 2012b), and struggles for environmental justice (Davies & Mah, 2020; Mah & Wang, 2019). Against one‐dimensional accounts of health struggle, the field skillfully demonstrates how toxicity is produced through systems of oppression while simultaneously acknowledging how residents of toxic spaces experience attachments to place and self in empowered ways – or at least not in ways that are solely defined by resignation and discrimination.…”

“…To explain the dynamic and contested experiences of health that have emerged in this context, I situate my analysis within the bourgeoning literature on toxic geographies. Scholars in this field have turned to theorisations of violence (Davies, 2018, 2019; Nunn, 2018), environmental justice (Davies & Mah, 2020; Mah & Wang, 2019), and intimate and embodied activism (Liboiron et al, 2018; Tironi, 2018; Vasudevan, 2021) to craft more nuanced accounts of how residents navigate everyday life under conditions of political, economic, and environmental toxicity. However, despite these productive insights, more often than not, these critical approaches fail to grapple with the instability of the health/illness experience in toxic spaces.…”