Article ID: CBB443623389

Dirty hands: The toxic politics of denunciation (June 2018)

unapi

Fiske, Amelia (Author)


Social Studies of Science
Volume: 48
Issue: 3
Pages: 389-413


Publication Date: June 2018
Edition Details: Special Issue: Toxic Politics Guest edited by Nerea Calvillo, Max Liboiron, Manuel Tironi and Nicole Nelson
Language: English

In September 2013, President Correa balanced himself on a felled log over an oil waste pit in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Extending a bare hand dripping with crude, he launched La Mano Sucia de Chevron campaign, demanding accountability for decades of contamination. This article explores the role of bodily knowledge in witnessing industrial contamination and struggles for environmental justice. Situating the mano sucia in the history of activism in the region, I show how the juxtaposition of different hands within the same motif reveals profoundly asymmetric relationships to the toxic entanglements that oil produces. Dirtied hands reveal the co-production of toxicity and power in extractive landscapes: At times throughout this article, the gesture calls for corporate accountability and distributive environmental justice, at other times, it reveals the systemic production of material, social and political distance between the accrual of benefit and the production of harm in an industrial-capitalist order. While drawing on the central role of bodily knowledges in apprehending environmental harm, I argue that bodily knowledges must also be examined for their specific relationships to forms of power and exploitation, and for their potential for appropriation by other parties – even when dedicated to condemning environmental injustice.

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Article Max Liboiron; Manuel Tironi; Nerea Calvillo (June 2018) Toxic politics: Acting in a permanently polluted world. Social Studies of Science (pp. 331-349). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB443623389/

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Authors & Contributors
Kristina Lyons
Spackman, Christy C. W.
Tironi, Manuel
Li, Fabiana
Johnson, Matthew P.
Conohar Scott
Concepts
Political activists and activism
Pollution
Environmentalism
Environmental degradation
Technoscience; science and technology studies
Environmental justice
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
20th century
Places
United States
Colombia
Virgin Islands (U.S.)
Love Canal
West Virginia (U.S.)
Gulf of Mexico
Institutions
Friends of the Earth
Tennessee Valley Authority
University of Pennsylvania
Du Pont Company
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