Life without Lead examines the social, political and environmental dimensions of a devastating le... more Life without Lead examines the social, political and environmental dimensions of a devastating lead poisoning epidemic. Drawing from a political ecology of health perspective, the book situates the Uruguayan lead contamination crisis in relation to neoliberal reform, globalization, and the resurgence of the political Left in Latin America. The author traces the rise of an environmental justice social movement, and the local and transnational circulation of environmental ideologies and contested science. Through fine-grained ethnographic analysis, this book shows how combating contamination intersected with class politics, the relationship of lead poisoning to poverty, and debates over the best way to identify and manage an unprecedented local environmental health problem.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2018
Drawing from ethnographic research on lead poisoning in Uruguay and secondary literature from lea... more Drawing from ethnographic research on lead poisoning in Uruguay and secondary literature from lead poisoning cases around the world, the commentary argues that public health policy guided by pragmatism presents multiple dangers to effective health intervention.
Toxic Heritage: Legacies, Futures, and Environmental Injustice, 2023
Consumer capitalism ushered in a world of pervasive contamination, leaving a legacy of harm and a... more Consumer capitalism ushered in a world of pervasive contamination, leaving a legacy of harm and a future of uncertainty. Few "toxic events" better encapsulate this than per-and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, a broad category of synthetic chemicals that includes several thousand substances (Renfrew and Pearson 2021). They are used to coat things or make materials that repel water or oil. Such properties have innumerable uses, ranging from clothing and furniture to nonstick cookware, food packaging, and cosmetics. PFAS came into widespread use in the 1950s before significant environmental regulation existed in the United States and have evaded meaningful oversight ever since (Richter, Cordner, and Brown 2021). By the 1970s, the chemicals were turning up in drinking water, fish, and people's bodies, but it wasn't until the 2000s that PFAS became an emerging contaminant of scientific and regulatory concern. Their commercially desirable characteristics also make them a pernicious threat to public health. Some bioaccumulate and move easily with surface and groundwater, through air emissions, or with weather systems. And they resist degrading, some never naturally breaking down, earning the nickname "forever chemicals." We all embody the legacy and uncertain future of forever chemicals. Biomonitoring studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found PFAS in the blood of almost everyone sampled, suggesting ubiquitous human exposure (CDC 2017). They're also toxic, with extremely low levels associated with a wide range of health effects, including testicular and kidney cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, pregnancy-induced hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, decreased vaccine response, and developmental problems (ATSDR 2020). In 2016, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a health advisory for two PFAS substances, perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), recommending a drinking water limit of 70 parts per trillion. Then in 2022, it dramatically lowered its
El envenenamiento por plomo es la enfermedad ambiental mas antigua del mundo y la mas estudiada c... more El envenenamiento por plomo es la enfermedad ambiental mas antigua del mundo y la mas estudiada cientificamente (Bellinger, 2004). Desde la antiguedad, este metal fue usado en las primeras tablas de escritura del medio oriente, en los acueductos romanos, la ceramica indigena americana, y los cosmeticos africanos y chinos (Nriagu, 1983). Era tambien un metal trascendental para la revolucion industrial y la produccion e infraestructura capitalista durante los siglos XIX y XX (Markowitz y Rosner, 2002). En si, el legado del plomo, un potente neurotoxico y asaltante de casi todos los organos y sistemas corporales, con especial amenaza al desarrollo intelectual infantil, se convirtio en el riesgo mas extendido para la salud de los ninos norteamericanos durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX (Bellinger, 2004). Y la historia del plomo se sigue escribiendo. La intensificacion y expansion geografica de procesos industriales a nivel mundial bajo la globalizacion y el neoliberalismo, han propul...
Oxford Bibliographies in Latin American Studies, 2021
Bilbliographic review of social scientific and humanities scholarship on Montevideo. Private copy... more Bilbliographic review of social scientific and humanities scholarship on Montevideo. Private copy available upon request.
This article examines the social life of PFAS contamination (a class of several thousand syntheti... more This article examines the social life of PFAS contamination (a class of several thousand synthetic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) and maps the growing research in the social sciences on the unique conundrums and complex travels of the “forever chemical.” We explore social, political, and cultural dimensions of PFAS toxicity, especially how PFAS move from unseen sites into individual bodies and into the public eye in late industrial contexts; how toxicity is comprehended, experienced, and imagined; the factors shaping regulatory action and ignorance; and how PFAS have been the subject of competing forms of knowledge production. Lastly, we highlight how people mobilize collectively, or become demobilized, in response to PFAS pollution/ toxicity. We argue that PFAS exposure experiences, perceptions, and responses move dynamically through a “toxicity continuum” spanning invisibility, suffering, resignation, and refusal. We off er the concept of the “toxic event” as a way to make s...
Environment and Society: Advances in Research, 2021
Th is article examines the social life of PFAS contamination (a class of sev-eral thousand syn... more Th is article examines the social life of PFAS contamination (a class of sev-eral thousand synthetic per- and polyfl uoroalkyl substances) and maps the growing research in the social sciences on the unique conundrums and complex travels of the “forever chemical.” We explore social, political, and cultural dimensions of PFAS tox-icity, especially how PFAS move from unseen sites into individual bodies and into the public eye in late industrial contexts; how toxicity is comprehended, experienced, and imagined; the factors shaping regulatory action and ignorance; and how PFAS have been the subject of competing forms of knowledge production. Lastly, we highlight how people mobilize collectively, or become demobilized, in response to PFAS pollu-tion/toxicity. We argue that PFAS exposure experiences, perceptions, and responses move dynamically through a “toxicity continuum” spanning invisibility, suff ering, res-ignation, and refusal. We off er the concept of the “toxic event” as a way to make sense of the contexts and conditions by which otherwise invisible pollution/toxicity turns into public, mass-mediated, and political episodes. We ground our review in our ongoing multisited ethnographic research on the PFAS exposure experience.
The Routledge International Handbook of Violence Studies, 2019
[Please contact the author for a private copy] This chapter brings together scholarship at the in... more [Please contact the author for a private copy] This chapter brings together scholarship at the intersection of industrial contamination, cities, and environmental health and justice. It follows the lead of green criminologists who argue for interdisciplinary and political economic perspectives on green violence and crime that highlight the structuring mechanisms of “green injustice” while moving beyond a narrow focus on ecological harms recognized and governed by law, policy and state regulations. The chapter focuses on both graphic “violent environments” and the often hidden-from-view world of “toxic suffering” generated by the industrial contamination of air, water and land in cities across the world. It also reviews the efforts of citizens, grassroots groups, scientists and their allies in contesting green violence by forging alternative knowledge regimes and meaningful paths toward environmental justice.
Drawing from ethnographic research on lead poisoning in Uruguay and secondary literature from lea... more Drawing from ethnographic research on lead poisoning in Uruguay and secondary literature from lead poisoning cases around the world, the commentary argues that public health policy guided by pragmatism presents multiple dangers to effective health intervention. In the past few years, lead poisoning has once again drawn extensive news coverage and sparked widespread public concern in the United States. The Flint, Michigan water crisis serves as a reminder of lead's stubborn persistence in urban infrastructure and the toxic legacies of industrial abandonment [1]. It also reveals how environmental health crises are profoundly social and political in character. Lead contamination in Flint was a product of the misguided, tragic and even criminal decisions made by local and state political, environmental, and public health officials. Its contours were shaped by a political climate of fiscal austerity and the structurally disproportionate exposure to harm experienced by urban minorities and the poor [2]. In the aftermath of Flint, a Reuters investigative report revealed over 3000 U.S. community " hot spots " with even graver cases of lead poisoning than those found during the peak of Flint's water crisis [3]. The pervasive hazards of lead in water and the interior lead paints in old housing stock are the two primary sources of continued lead contamination across the country, and both disproportionately affect the urban poor. A recent Consumer Reports study, however, revealed high levels of lead in popular baby food brands, even in the organic labels catering to middle and upper-middle class parents, reminding us once again that lead exposure has never been the exclusive domain of the poor, but has always posed a universal risk as well [4]. Public, political and even scientific recognition of this silent scourge, however, has typically been conditioned by the interplay of broader socioeconomic contexts and political forces. Lead poisoning, quite simply, has cyclically appeared and faded from public view over the past two thousand years for reasons having little to do with its objective presence in the environment or in people's bodies [5]. How are the social and political experiences of lead contamination and poisoning similar or different in low and middle-income countries (LMICs)? I would argue that there are key differences that must be recognized, including typically higher levels of acute lead poisoning, later phaseout of tetraethyl leaded (TEL) gasoline, and greater relative contributions to contamination from the informal economy. But I would also caution that these differences sometimes obscure the similarities of experience and more importantly the interconnectedness and shared complicity of high income and LMICs, or what many social scientists refer to, respectively, as the global North and the global South. These include the globally interconnected toxic cycle of mining, production, consumption, waste disposal and recycling. My own long-term ethnographic research on lead poisoning in Montevideo, Uruguay has sought to unveil the interplay of social, political, economic and scientific forces that led to the creation and public recognition of a mass lead poisoning epidemic in 2001, as well as the new forms of activism, knowledge production, and social and environmental regulation and governance that emerged in response to the lead discoveries [6,7].
Lead poisoning, one of the most researched and ‘settled’ domains of
global biomedical science, ha... more Lead poisoning, one of the most researched and ‘settled’ domains of global biomedical science, has only been collectively acknowledged as a significant environmental health risk in Uruguay from 2001. Since then, lead has been mobilised in overlapping, often contradictory ways: as an invisible and silenced epidemic; as a powerful object of moral reflection and political action; and as a socially negotiated and unsettled scientific domain. This article traces the scientific networks and citizen–science alliances at work in the conflict zones of science, politics and society. Drawing from extensive ethnographic fieldwork, the article highlights the sociopolitical processes by which settled science became ‘unsettled’ (and vice versa), and how scientific facts and norms were translated, localised and reworked by different social actors operating at the intersection between centres and margins of global scientific expertise and power.
In ExtrACTION: Impacts, Engagements, and Alternative Futures. Edited by Kirk Jalbert, Anna Willow... more In ExtrACTION: Impacts, Engagements, and Alternative Futures. Edited by Kirk Jalbert, Anna Willow, David Casagrande, and Stephanie Paladino. London and New York: Routledge, pp.31-45.
[Please contact me if you would like a PDF version of the chapter]
International journal of occupational and environmental health
At a conference held at Stony Brook University in December 2007, "Dangerous Trade: Histories... more At a conference held at Stony Brook University in December 2007, "Dangerous Trade: Histories of Industrial Hazard across a Globalizing World," participants endorsed a Code of Sustainable Practice in Occupational and Environmental Health and Safety for Corporations. The Code outlines practices that would ensure corporations enact the highest health and environmentally protective measures in all the locations in which they operate. Corporations should observe international guidelines on occupational exposure to air contaminants, plant safety, air and water pollutant releases, hazardous waste disposal practices, remediation of polluted sites, public disclosure of toxic releases, product hazard labeling, sale of products for specific uses, storage and transport of toxic intermediates and products, corporate safety and health auditing, and corporate environmental auditing. Protective measures in all locations should be consonant with the most protective measures applied anywher...
City & Society 28 (3): 319-340. December 2016.
This article examines the origins and aftermath of... more City & Society 28 (3): 319-340. December 2016. This article examines the origins and aftermath of a 2011 English football race controversy, where an English Football Association tribunal found Uruguayan Luis Suarez guilty of using racially abusive language against Patrice Evra, a Frenchman of Senegalese descent. It approaches the Suarez-Evra controversy as a flashpoint of broader transformations in England, France, and Uruguay associated with sports, race, and nationalism, highlighting the problematic nature of cultural and linguistic translation under shifting racial, ethnic, and cultural dynamics. The controversy also provided an opportunity for Afro-Uruguayans to collectively denounce and redress longstanding forms of racism in that country. [Soccer (football); Race; Globalization; England; France; Uruguay]
Introduction to our co-edited special section of the journal City & Society 28 (3): 271-275. Dece... more Introduction to our co-edited special section of the journal City & Society 28 (3): 271-275. December 2016.
The article situates a lead poisoning epidemic in Uruguay within recent processes of neoliberal a... more The article situates a lead poisoning epidemic in Uruguay within recent processes of neoliberal and environmental reform. It argues industrial contamination and its socio-political responses have become prevalent through neoliberal-inspired transformations in production and consumption, the dismantling of state services, and increased social vulnerability to affliction. Contrary to orthodox theories of neoliberal restructuring, however, environmental concerns have provoked state bureaucratic expansion, rather than contraction, bringing about new forms of environmental governance and enabling environmental politics across social scales. Neoliberal reforms in Uruguay have resulted in geographically uneven spatial arrangements, with ecology taking on central importance in both macro-level development strategies as well as in grassroots responses to intensified or newly recognized socio-environmental hazards. This article analytically draws together neoliberalism and environmentalism, or "neoliberal nature" in Uruguay. It shows how neoliberal engagements with nature and the environment structure risk for masses of people, providing the political tools for both environmental governance and the contestation of environmentally destructive practices.
L'article relie l’empoisonnement au plomb en l'Uruguay avec les processus de réforme néo-libérale et de l'environnement. Elle fait valoir que la contamination industrielle et des réponses socio-politiques sont liées à les transformations de la production et de consommation, le démantèlement des services de l'Etat, et l'augmentation de la vulnérabilité sociale à l’empoisonnement. Contrairement aux théories orthodoxe de la restructuration néo-libérale, les préoccupations environnementales ont provoqué l'expansion bureaucratique d'État, plutôt que de la contraction. Cela a entraîné de nouvelles formes de gouvernance environnementale et la politique de l'environnement à travers les échelles sociales. Les réformes néolibérales en Uruguay ont abouti à des arrangements géographiquement inégale. L'écologie et les risques socio-environnementaux ont pris une importance centrale à la fois au niveau macro des stratégies de développement, ainsi que a la base (grassroots). Cet article rassemble le néolibéralisme et la protection de l'environnement, ou "la nature néo-libérale" de l'Uruguay. Il montre comment néo-libéralisme crée de nouveaux risques. Cette politique prévoit des outils de gestion de l'environnement, mais aussi la contestation des pratiques destructrices de l'environnement.
Este trabajo sitúa a una epidemia de contaminación por plomo en Uruguay en relación con recientes reformas neoliberales y ambientales. Propone que la contaminación industrial y sus respuestas socio-políticas han aumentado a través de las transformaciones neoliberales en la producción y el consumo, en el desmantelamiento de servicios del estado, y a través de un auge de vulnerabilidad a la aflicción social. Contrario a teorías ortodoxas de la reestructuración neoliberal, sin embargo, los problemas ambientales han provocado una expansión burocrática estatal, en vez de su retroceso, dando lugar tanto a nuevas formas de gobernabilidad ambiental como de nuevos movimientos ambientalistas. Las reformas neoliberales en Uruguay han resultado en arreglos espaciales geográficamente desiguales, mientras la ecología ha tomado suma importancia tanto en las estrategias de macro desarrollo económico, como en las respuestas de base a riesgos socio-ambientales intensificados o nuevamente descubiertos. Este trabajo reúne analíticamente al neoliberalismo con el ambientalismo, o la "naturaleza neoliberal" en Uruguay. Demuestra que las intervenciones neoliberales en la naturaleza y el ambiente estructura el riesgo para las masas, y ofrece a su vez herramientas políticas tanto para la gobernabilidad ambiental como para las respuestas contestatarias a prácticas ambientalmente destructivas.
The development of horizontal hydraulic fracture drilling or “fracking” has allowed for the extra... more The development of horizontal hydraulic fracture drilling or “fracking” has allowed for the extraction of deep, unconventional shale gas deposits in various shale seams throughout the USA. One such shale seam, the Marcellus shale, extends through New York State, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, where shale gas development has rapidly increased within the last decade. This has created a boom of economic activity surrounding the energy industry. However, this bounty comes with risks to environmental and public health and has led to divisive community polarization over the issue in the Marcellus shale region. In the face of potential environmental and social disruption, and a great deal of controversy surrounding “fracking” the oil and gas industry has had to undertake a myriad of public relations initiatives to legitimize their extraction efforts in the Marcellus shale region, and to frame the shale gas boom in a positive light to stakeholders. This article investigates one such public relations initiative, the Energy in Depth (EID) Northeast Marcellus Initiative. Through qualitative content analysis of EID’s online web material, this article examines the ways in which the industry presents and frames natural gas development to the general public. Through appeals to patriotism, the use of environmental imagery, and a claimed commitment to scientific reason, the oil and gas industry uses EID to frame the shale gas extraction process in a positive light, all the while framing those who question or oppose the processes of shale gas extraction as irrational obstructionists
Life without Lead examines the social, political and environmental dimensions of a devastating le... more Life without Lead examines the social, political and environmental dimensions of a devastating lead poisoning epidemic. Drawing from a political ecology of health perspective, the book situates the Uruguayan lead contamination crisis in relation to neoliberal reform, globalization, and the resurgence of the political Left in Latin America. The author traces the rise of an environmental justice social movement, and the local and transnational circulation of environmental ideologies and contested science. Through fine-grained ethnographic analysis, this book shows how combating contamination intersected with class politics, the relationship of lead poisoning to poverty, and debates over the best way to identify and manage an unprecedented local environmental health problem.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2018
Drawing from ethnographic research on lead poisoning in Uruguay and secondary literature from lea... more Drawing from ethnographic research on lead poisoning in Uruguay and secondary literature from lead poisoning cases around the world, the commentary argues that public health policy guided by pragmatism presents multiple dangers to effective health intervention.
Toxic Heritage: Legacies, Futures, and Environmental Injustice, 2023
Consumer capitalism ushered in a world of pervasive contamination, leaving a legacy of harm and a... more Consumer capitalism ushered in a world of pervasive contamination, leaving a legacy of harm and a future of uncertainty. Few "toxic events" better encapsulate this than per-and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, a broad category of synthetic chemicals that includes several thousand substances (Renfrew and Pearson 2021). They are used to coat things or make materials that repel water or oil. Such properties have innumerable uses, ranging from clothing and furniture to nonstick cookware, food packaging, and cosmetics. PFAS came into widespread use in the 1950s before significant environmental regulation existed in the United States and have evaded meaningful oversight ever since (Richter, Cordner, and Brown 2021). By the 1970s, the chemicals were turning up in drinking water, fish, and people's bodies, but it wasn't until the 2000s that PFAS became an emerging contaminant of scientific and regulatory concern. Their commercially desirable characteristics also make them a pernicious threat to public health. Some bioaccumulate and move easily with surface and groundwater, through air emissions, or with weather systems. And they resist degrading, some never naturally breaking down, earning the nickname "forever chemicals." We all embody the legacy and uncertain future of forever chemicals. Biomonitoring studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found PFAS in the blood of almost everyone sampled, suggesting ubiquitous human exposure (CDC 2017). They're also toxic, with extremely low levels associated with a wide range of health effects, including testicular and kidney cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, pregnancy-induced hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, decreased vaccine response, and developmental problems (ATSDR 2020). In 2016, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a health advisory for two PFAS substances, perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), recommending a drinking water limit of 70 parts per trillion. Then in 2022, it dramatically lowered its
El envenenamiento por plomo es la enfermedad ambiental mas antigua del mundo y la mas estudiada c... more El envenenamiento por plomo es la enfermedad ambiental mas antigua del mundo y la mas estudiada cientificamente (Bellinger, 2004). Desde la antiguedad, este metal fue usado en las primeras tablas de escritura del medio oriente, en los acueductos romanos, la ceramica indigena americana, y los cosmeticos africanos y chinos (Nriagu, 1983). Era tambien un metal trascendental para la revolucion industrial y la produccion e infraestructura capitalista durante los siglos XIX y XX (Markowitz y Rosner, 2002). En si, el legado del plomo, un potente neurotoxico y asaltante de casi todos los organos y sistemas corporales, con especial amenaza al desarrollo intelectual infantil, se convirtio en el riesgo mas extendido para la salud de los ninos norteamericanos durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX (Bellinger, 2004). Y la historia del plomo se sigue escribiendo. La intensificacion y expansion geografica de procesos industriales a nivel mundial bajo la globalizacion y el neoliberalismo, han propul...
Oxford Bibliographies in Latin American Studies, 2021
Bilbliographic review of social scientific and humanities scholarship on Montevideo. Private copy... more Bilbliographic review of social scientific and humanities scholarship on Montevideo. Private copy available upon request.
This article examines the social life of PFAS contamination (a class of several thousand syntheti... more This article examines the social life of PFAS contamination (a class of several thousand synthetic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) and maps the growing research in the social sciences on the unique conundrums and complex travels of the “forever chemical.” We explore social, political, and cultural dimensions of PFAS toxicity, especially how PFAS move from unseen sites into individual bodies and into the public eye in late industrial contexts; how toxicity is comprehended, experienced, and imagined; the factors shaping regulatory action and ignorance; and how PFAS have been the subject of competing forms of knowledge production. Lastly, we highlight how people mobilize collectively, or become demobilized, in response to PFAS pollution/ toxicity. We argue that PFAS exposure experiences, perceptions, and responses move dynamically through a “toxicity continuum” spanning invisibility, suffering, resignation, and refusal. We off er the concept of the “toxic event” as a way to make s...
Environment and Society: Advances in Research, 2021
Th is article examines the social life of PFAS contamination (a class of sev-eral thousand syn... more Th is article examines the social life of PFAS contamination (a class of sev-eral thousand synthetic per- and polyfl uoroalkyl substances) and maps the growing research in the social sciences on the unique conundrums and complex travels of the “forever chemical.” We explore social, political, and cultural dimensions of PFAS tox-icity, especially how PFAS move from unseen sites into individual bodies and into the public eye in late industrial contexts; how toxicity is comprehended, experienced, and imagined; the factors shaping regulatory action and ignorance; and how PFAS have been the subject of competing forms of knowledge production. Lastly, we highlight how people mobilize collectively, or become demobilized, in response to PFAS pollu-tion/toxicity. We argue that PFAS exposure experiences, perceptions, and responses move dynamically through a “toxicity continuum” spanning invisibility, suff ering, res-ignation, and refusal. We off er the concept of the “toxic event” as a way to make sense of the contexts and conditions by which otherwise invisible pollution/toxicity turns into public, mass-mediated, and political episodes. We ground our review in our ongoing multisited ethnographic research on the PFAS exposure experience.
The Routledge International Handbook of Violence Studies, 2019
[Please contact the author for a private copy] This chapter brings together scholarship at the in... more [Please contact the author for a private copy] This chapter brings together scholarship at the intersection of industrial contamination, cities, and environmental health and justice. It follows the lead of green criminologists who argue for interdisciplinary and political economic perspectives on green violence and crime that highlight the structuring mechanisms of “green injustice” while moving beyond a narrow focus on ecological harms recognized and governed by law, policy and state regulations. The chapter focuses on both graphic “violent environments” and the often hidden-from-view world of “toxic suffering” generated by the industrial contamination of air, water and land in cities across the world. It also reviews the efforts of citizens, grassroots groups, scientists and their allies in contesting green violence by forging alternative knowledge regimes and meaningful paths toward environmental justice.
Drawing from ethnographic research on lead poisoning in Uruguay and secondary literature from lea... more Drawing from ethnographic research on lead poisoning in Uruguay and secondary literature from lead poisoning cases around the world, the commentary argues that public health policy guided by pragmatism presents multiple dangers to effective health intervention. In the past few years, lead poisoning has once again drawn extensive news coverage and sparked widespread public concern in the United States. The Flint, Michigan water crisis serves as a reminder of lead's stubborn persistence in urban infrastructure and the toxic legacies of industrial abandonment [1]. It also reveals how environmental health crises are profoundly social and political in character. Lead contamination in Flint was a product of the misguided, tragic and even criminal decisions made by local and state political, environmental, and public health officials. Its contours were shaped by a political climate of fiscal austerity and the structurally disproportionate exposure to harm experienced by urban minorities and the poor [2]. In the aftermath of Flint, a Reuters investigative report revealed over 3000 U.S. community " hot spots " with even graver cases of lead poisoning than those found during the peak of Flint's water crisis [3]. The pervasive hazards of lead in water and the interior lead paints in old housing stock are the two primary sources of continued lead contamination across the country, and both disproportionately affect the urban poor. A recent Consumer Reports study, however, revealed high levels of lead in popular baby food brands, even in the organic labels catering to middle and upper-middle class parents, reminding us once again that lead exposure has never been the exclusive domain of the poor, but has always posed a universal risk as well [4]. Public, political and even scientific recognition of this silent scourge, however, has typically been conditioned by the interplay of broader socioeconomic contexts and political forces. Lead poisoning, quite simply, has cyclically appeared and faded from public view over the past two thousand years for reasons having little to do with its objective presence in the environment or in people's bodies [5]. How are the social and political experiences of lead contamination and poisoning similar or different in low and middle-income countries (LMICs)? I would argue that there are key differences that must be recognized, including typically higher levels of acute lead poisoning, later phaseout of tetraethyl leaded (TEL) gasoline, and greater relative contributions to contamination from the informal economy. But I would also caution that these differences sometimes obscure the similarities of experience and more importantly the interconnectedness and shared complicity of high income and LMICs, or what many social scientists refer to, respectively, as the global North and the global South. These include the globally interconnected toxic cycle of mining, production, consumption, waste disposal and recycling. My own long-term ethnographic research on lead poisoning in Montevideo, Uruguay has sought to unveil the interplay of social, political, economic and scientific forces that led to the creation and public recognition of a mass lead poisoning epidemic in 2001, as well as the new forms of activism, knowledge production, and social and environmental regulation and governance that emerged in response to the lead discoveries [6,7].
Lead poisoning, one of the most researched and ‘settled’ domains of
global biomedical science, ha... more Lead poisoning, one of the most researched and ‘settled’ domains of global biomedical science, has only been collectively acknowledged as a significant environmental health risk in Uruguay from 2001. Since then, lead has been mobilised in overlapping, often contradictory ways: as an invisible and silenced epidemic; as a powerful object of moral reflection and political action; and as a socially negotiated and unsettled scientific domain. This article traces the scientific networks and citizen–science alliances at work in the conflict zones of science, politics and society. Drawing from extensive ethnographic fieldwork, the article highlights the sociopolitical processes by which settled science became ‘unsettled’ (and vice versa), and how scientific facts and norms were translated, localised and reworked by different social actors operating at the intersection between centres and margins of global scientific expertise and power.
In ExtrACTION: Impacts, Engagements, and Alternative Futures. Edited by Kirk Jalbert, Anna Willow... more In ExtrACTION: Impacts, Engagements, and Alternative Futures. Edited by Kirk Jalbert, Anna Willow, David Casagrande, and Stephanie Paladino. London and New York: Routledge, pp.31-45.
[Please contact me if you would like a PDF version of the chapter]
International journal of occupational and environmental health
At a conference held at Stony Brook University in December 2007, "Dangerous Trade: Histories... more At a conference held at Stony Brook University in December 2007, "Dangerous Trade: Histories of Industrial Hazard across a Globalizing World," participants endorsed a Code of Sustainable Practice in Occupational and Environmental Health and Safety for Corporations. The Code outlines practices that would ensure corporations enact the highest health and environmentally protective measures in all the locations in which they operate. Corporations should observe international guidelines on occupational exposure to air contaminants, plant safety, air and water pollutant releases, hazardous waste disposal practices, remediation of polluted sites, public disclosure of toxic releases, product hazard labeling, sale of products for specific uses, storage and transport of toxic intermediates and products, corporate safety and health auditing, and corporate environmental auditing. Protective measures in all locations should be consonant with the most protective measures applied anywher...
City & Society 28 (3): 319-340. December 2016.
This article examines the origins and aftermath of... more City & Society 28 (3): 319-340. December 2016. This article examines the origins and aftermath of a 2011 English football race controversy, where an English Football Association tribunal found Uruguayan Luis Suarez guilty of using racially abusive language against Patrice Evra, a Frenchman of Senegalese descent. It approaches the Suarez-Evra controversy as a flashpoint of broader transformations in England, France, and Uruguay associated with sports, race, and nationalism, highlighting the problematic nature of cultural and linguistic translation under shifting racial, ethnic, and cultural dynamics. The controversy also provided an opportunity for Afro-Uruguayans to collectively denounce and redress longstanding forms of racism in that country. [Soccer (football); Race; Globalization; England; France; Uruguay]
Introduction to our co-edited special section of the journal City & Society 28 (3): 271-275. Dece... more Introduction to our co-edited special section of the journal City & Society 28 (3): 271-275. December 2016.
The article situates a lead poisoning epidemic in Uruguay within recent processes of neoliberal a... more The article situates a lead poisoning epidemic in Uruguay within recent processes of neoliberal and environmental reform. It argues industrial contamination and its socio-political responses have become prevalent through neoliberal-inspired transformations in production and consumption, the dismantling of state services, and increased social vulnerability to affliction. Contrary to orthodox theories of neoliberal restructuring, however, environmental concerns have provoked state bureaucratic expansion, rather than contraction, bringing about new forms of environmental governance and enabling environmental politics across social scales. Neoliberal reforms in Uruguay have resulted in geographically uneven spatial arrangements, with ecology taking on central importance in both macro-level development strategies as well as in grassroots responses to intensified or newly recognized socio-environmental hazards. This article analytically draws together neoliberalism and environmentalism, or "neoliberal nature" in Uruguay. It shows how neoliberal engagements with nature and the environment structure risk for masses of people, providing the political tools for both environmental governance and the contestation of environmentally destructive practices.
L'article relie l’empoisonnement au plomb en l'Uruguay avec les processus de réforme néo-libérale et de l'environnement. Elle fait valoir que la contamination industrielle et des réponses socio-politiques sont liées à les transformations de la production et de consommation, le démantèlement des services de l'Etat, et l'augmentation de la vulnérabilité sociale à l’empoisonnement. Contrairement aux théories orthodoxe de la restructuration néo-libérale, les préoccupations environnementales ont provoqué l'expansion bureaucratique d'État, plutôt que de la contraction. Cela a entraîné de nouvelles formes de gouvernance environnementale et la politique de l'environnement à travers les échelles sociales. Les réformes néolibérales en Uruguay ont abouti à des arrangements géographiquement inégale. L'écologie et les risques socio-environnementaux ont pris une importance centrale à la fois au niveau macro des stratégies de développement, ainsi que a la base (grassroots). Cet article rassemble le néolibéralisme et la protection de l'environnement, ou "la nature néo-libérale" de l'Uruguay. Il montre comment néo-libéralisme crée de nouveaux risques. Cette politique prévoit des outils de gestion de l'environnement, mais aussi la contestation des pratiques destructrices de l'environnement.
Este trabajo sitúa a una epidemia de contaminación por plomo en Uruguay en relación con recientes reformas neoliberales y ambientales. Propone que la contaminación industrial y sus respuestas socio-políticas han aumentado a través de las transformaciones neoliberales en la producción y el consumo, en el desmantelamiento de servicios del estado, y a través de un auge de vulnerabilidad a la aflicción social. Contrario a teorías ortodoxas de la reestructuración neoliberal, sin embargo, los problemas ambientales han provocado una expansión burocrática estatal, en vez de su retroceso, dando lugar tanto a nuevas formas de gobernabilidad ambiental como de nuevos movimientos ambientalistas. Las reformas neoliberales en Uruguay han resultado en arreglos espaciales geográficamente desiguales, mientras la ecología ha tomado suma importancia tanto en las estrategias de macro desarrollo económico, como en las respuestas de base a riesgos socio-ambientales intensificados o nuevamente descubiertos. Este trabajo reúne analíticamente al neoliberalismo con el ambientalismo, o la "naturaleza neoliberal" en Uruguay. Demuestra que las intervenciones neoliberales en la naturaleza y el ambiente estructura el riesgo para las masas, y ofrece a su vez herramientas políticas tanto para la gobernabilidad ambiental como para las respuestas contestatarias a prácticas ambientalmente destructivas.
The development of horizontal hydraulic fracture drilling or “fracking” has allowed for the extra... more The development of horizontal hydraulic fracture drilling or “fracking” has allowed for the extraction of deep, unconventional shale gas deposits in various shale seams throughout the USA. One such shale seam, the Marcellus shale, extends through New York State, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, where shale gas development has rapidly increased within the last decade. This has created a boom of economic activity surrounding the energy industry. However, this bounty comes with risks to environmental and public health and has led to divisive community polarization over the issue in the Marcellus shale region. In the face of potential environmental and social disruption, and a great deal of controversy surrounding “fracking” the oil and gas industry has had to undertake a myriad of public relations initiatives to legitimize their extraction efforts in the Marcellus shale region, and to frame the shale gas boom in a positive light to stakeholders. This article investigates one such public relations initiative, the Energy in Depth (EID) Northeast Marcellus Initiative. Through qualitative content analysis of EID’s online web material, this article examines the ways in which the industry presents and frames natural gas development to the general public. Through appeals to patriotism, the use of environmental imagery, and a claimed commitment to scientific reason, the oil and gas industry uses EID to frame the shale gas extraction process in a positive light, all the while framing those who question or oppose the processes of shale gas extraction as irrational obstructionists
Daniel Renfrew's Life Without Lead: Contamination, Crisis, and Hope in Uruguay (2018) is a master... more Daniel Renfrew's Life Without Lead: Contamination, Crisis, and Hope in Uruguay (2018) is a masterful undertaking on the anthropology of disaster and its everydayness. An ethnographic portrayal that is prismatic in its attention, the book combines numerous elements-place, civic performance, history, political economy-to bear on the lead poisoning epidemic in Montevideo, Uruguay at the turn of the 21 st century. The epidemic disproportionally affected
Review of Squatters and the Politics of Marginality in Uruguay, by Maria Jose Alvarez-Rivadulla. ... more Review of Squatters and the Politics of Marginality in Uruguay, by Maria Jose Alvarez-Rivadulla. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Uploads
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520295476/life-without-lead
global biomedical science, has only been collectively acknowledged
as a significant environmental health risk in Uruguay from 2001.
Since then, lead has been mobilised in overlapping, often
contradictory ways: as an invisible and silenced epidemic; as a
powerful object of moral reflection and political action; and as a
socially negotiated and unsettled scientific domain. This article
traces the scientific networks and citizen–science alliances at work
in the conflict zones of science, politics and society. Drawing from
extensive ethnographic fieldwork, the article highlights the sociopolitical
processes by which settled science became ‘unsettled’
(and vice versa), and how scientific facts and norms were
translated, localised and reworked by different social actors
operating at the intersection between centres and margins of
global scientific expertise and power.
[Please contact me if you would like a PDF version of the chapter]
This article examines the origins and aftermath of a 2011 English football race controversy, where an English Football Association tribunal found Uruguayan Luis Suarez guilty of using racially abusive language against Patrice Evra, a Frenchman of Senegalese descent. It approaches the Suarez-Evra controversy as a flashpoint of broader transformations in England, France, and Uruguay associated with sports, race, and nationalism, highlighting the problematic nature of cultural and linguistic
translation under shifting racial, ethnic, and cultural dynamics. The controversy also provided an opportunity for Afro-Uruguayans to collectively denounce and redress longstanding forms of racism in that country. [Soccer (football); Race; Globalization;
England; France; Uruguay]
L'article relie l’empoisonnement au plomb en l'Uruguay avec les processus de réforme néo-libérale et de l'environnement. Elle fait valoir que la contamination industrielle et des réponses socio-politiques sont liées à les transformations de la production et de consommation, le démantèlement des services de l'Etat, et l'augmentation de la vulnérabilité sociale à l’empoisonnement. Contrairement aux théories orthodoxe de la restructuration néo-libérale, les préoccupations environnementales ont provoqué l'expansion bureaucratique d'État, plutôt que de la contraction. Cela a entraîné de nouvelles formes de gouvernance environnementale et la politique de l'environnement à travers les échelles sociales. Les réformes néolibérales en Uruguay ont abouti à des arrangements géographiquement inégale. L'écologie et les risques socio-environnementaux ont pris une importance centrale à la fois au niveau macro des stratégies de développement, ainsi que a la base (grassroots). Cet article rassemble le néolibéralisme et la protection de l'environnement, ou "la nature néo-libérale" de l'Uruguay. Il montre comment néo-libéralisme crée de nouveaux risques. Cette politique prévoit des outils de gestion de l'environnement, mais aussi la contestation des pratiques destructrices de l'environnement.
Este trabajo sitúa a una epidemia de contaminación por plomo en Uruguay en relación con recientes reformas neoliberales y ambientales. Propone que la contaminación industrial y sus respuestas socio-políticas han aumentado a través de las transformaciones neoliberales en la producción y el consumo, en el desmantelamiento de servicios del estado, y a través de un auge de vulnerabilidad a la aflicción social. Contrario a teorías ortodoxas de la reestructuración neoliberal, sin embargo, los problemas ambientales han provocado una expansión burocrática estatal, en vez de su retroceso, dando lugar tanto a nuevas formas de gobernabilidad ambiental como de nuevos movimientos ambientalistas. Las reformas neoliberales en Uruguay han resultado en arreglos espaciales geográficamente desiguales, mientras la ecología ha tomado suma importancia tanto en las estrategias de macro desarrollo económico, como en las respuestas de base a riesgos socio-ambientales intensificados o nuevamente descubiertos. Este trabajo reúne analíticamente al neoliberalismo con el ambientalismo, o la "naturaleza neoliberal" en Uruguay. Demuestra que las intervenciones neoliberales en la naturaleza y el ambiente estructura el riesgo para las masas, y ofrece a su vez herramientas políticas tanto para la gobernabilidad ambiental como para las respuestas contestatarias a prácticas ambientalmente destructivas.
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520295476/life-without-lead
global biomedical science, has only been collectively acknowledged
as a significant environmental health risk in Uruguay from 2001.
Since then, lead has been mobilised in overlapping, often
contradictory ways: as an invisible and silenced epidemic; as a
powerful object of moral reflection and political action; and as a
socially negotiated and unsettled scientific domain. This article
traces the scientific networks and citizen–science alliances at work
in the conflict zones of science, politics and society. Drawing from
extensive ethnographic fieldwork, the article highlights the sociopolitical
processes by which settled science became ‘unsettled’
(and vice versa), and how scientific facts and norms were
translated, localised and reworked by different social actors
operating at the intersection between centres and margins of
global scientific expertise and power.
[Please contact me if you would like a PDF version of the chapter]
This article examines the origins and aftermath of a 2011 English football race controversy, where an English Football Association tribunal found Uruguayan Luis Suarez guilty of using racially abusive language against Patrice Evra, a Frenchman of Senegalese descent. It approaches the Suarez-Evra controversy as a flashpoint of broader transformations in England, France, and Uruguay associated with sports, race, and nationalism, highlighting the problematic nature of cultural and linguistic
translation under shifting racial, ethnic, and cultural dynamics. The controversy also provided an opportunity for Afro-Uruguayans to collectively denounce and redress longstanding forms of racism in that country. [Soccer (football); Race; Globalization;
England; France; Uruguay]
L'article relie l’empoisonnement au plomb en l'Uruguay avec les processus de réforme néo-libérale et de l'environnement. Elle fait valoir que la contamination industrielle et des réponses socio-politiques sont liées à les transformations de la production et de consommation, le démantèlement des services de l'Etat, et l'augmentation de la vulnérabilité sociale à l’empoisonnement. Contrairement aux théories orthodoxe de la restructuration néo-libérale, les préoccupations environnementales ont provoqué l'expansion bureaucratique d'État, plutôt que de la contraction. Cela a entraîné de nouvelles formes de gouvernance environnementale et la politique de l'environnement à travers les échelles sociales. Les réformes néolibérales en Uruguay ont abouti à des arrangements géographiquement inégale. L'écologie et les risques socio-environnementaux ont pris une importance centrale à la fois au niveau macro des stratégies de développement, ainsi que a la base (grassroots). Cet article rassemble le néolibéralisme et la protection de l'environnement, ou "la nature néo-libérale" de l'Uruguay. Il montre comment néo-libéralisme crée de nouveaux risques. Cette politique prévoit des outils de gestion de l'environnement, mais aussi la contestation des pratiques destructrices de l'environnement.
Este trabajo sitúa a una epidemia de contaminación por plomo en Uruguay en relación con recientes reformas neoliberales y ambientales. Propone que la contaminación industrial y sus respuestas socio-políticas han aumentado a través de las transformaciones neoliberales en la producción y el consumo, en el desmantelamiento de servicios del estado, y a través de un auge de vulnerabilidad a la aflicción social. Contrario a teorías ortodoxas de la reestructuración neoliberal, sin embargo, los problemas ambientales han provocado una expansión burocrática estatal, en vez de su retroceso, dando lugar tanto a nuevas formas de gobernabilidad ambiental como de nuevos movimientos ambientalistas. Las reformas neoliberales en Uruguay han resultado en arreglos espaciales geográficamente desiguales, mientras la ecología ha tomado suma importancia tanto en las estrategias de macro desarrollo económico, como en las respuestas de base a riesgos socio-ambientales intensificados o nuevamente descubiertos. Este trabajo reúne analíticamente al neoliberalismo con el ambientalismo, o la "naturaleza neoliberal" en Uruguay. Demuestra que las intervenciones neoliberales en la naturaleza y el ambiente estructura el riesgo para las masas, y ofrece a su vez herramientas políticas tanto para la gobernabilidad ambiental como para las respuestas contestatarias a prácticas ambientalmente destructivas.