Description
Book SynopsisResidues offers readers a new approach for conceptualizing the environmental impacts of chemicals production, consumption, disposal, and regulation. Environmental protection regimes tend to be highly segmented according to place, media, substance, and effect; academic scholarship often reflects this same segmented approach. Yet, in chemical substances we encounter phenomena that are at once voluminous and miniscule, singular and ubiquitous, regulated yet unruly. Inspired by recent studies of materiality and infrastructures, we introduce “residual materialism” as a framework for attending to the socio-material properties of chemicals and their world-making powers. Tracking residues through time, space, and understanding helps us see how the past has been built into our present chemical environments and future-oriented regulatory systems, why contaminants seem to always evade control, and why the Anthropocene is as inextricably harnessed to the synthesis of carbon into new molecules as it is driven by carbon’s combustion.
Trade Review"Residues shows how the chemicals we systematically ignore are powerful agents shaping our environmental future. A compelling argument for putting forgotten materials front and center in environmental research and politics."
— Evan Hepler-Smith, Duke University
"This erudite and accessible book presents a novel theoretical framing that draws on examples from a multiplicity of intriguing case studies from across the globe.
Residues is distinguished by its collaborative authorship and multi-disciplinary and multinational scope, seeking to change how scholars in a range of disciplines study chemicals."— Sara Shostak, author of Exposed Science
"Residues offers readers a new approach for conceptualizing the environmental impacts of chemicals production, consumption, disposal, and regulation."— American Sociological Association - Environmental Sociology Newsletter
Table of ContentsPreface
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
1. Residues Properties
2. Legacy
3. Accretion
4. Apprehension
5. Residual Materialism
Bibliography
Authors' Biographies
