Toxicity and Global STS

Session Submission Type: Traditional (Closed) Panel

Abstract

Toxic substances have long been a productive field of analysis in science & technology studies. STS scholars have studied the production of knowledge and ignorance about the proliferation, risks, and effects of toxic substances. The scholars have analyzed efforts to control and remediate toxicity by state actors, environmental justice and other activists, and attempts to thwart such efforts. This long-standing engagement with toxicity has resulted in seminal contributions to STS, including Sheila Jasanoff’s work on science, expertise, and democracy; Michelle Murphy’s studies of uncertainty and alter-life; Gabrielle Hecht’s book on nuclearity; Adriana Petryna’s concept of biological citizenship; and Kim Fortun’s analysis of transnational environmental advocacy in late industrialism. While STS has advanced the understanding of toxicity, the study of toxicity has advanced STS.
This session convenes scholars who study toxicity in the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Europe. The papers analyze the production, proliferation, consequences, and identification of toxic substances as well as their containment, control, and remediation. Studying sites of mining, building removal, disaster, and food production and trade, each paper inquires into the ways in which scientific, economic, and political processes that have shaped toxicity and its effects across Global North and Global South. The papers interrogate how toxic contamination has enabled or disabled such connections and processes. Building on those seminal contributions, this session seeks to foster a conversation about studying toxicity in postcolonial contexts and the tools of STS, those at hand and those to be developed, for such global analyses.

Sub Unit

• 4S Annual Meeting

Chair

• Kim Fortun, University of California Irvine

Discussant

• Kim Fortun, University of California Irvine

Individual Presentations

• Quicksilver's Child: Mother-to-Infant Transmission of Mercury Toxicity - Ruth Goldstein

• “Tiny Threads”: Building Demolition and Toxic Remediation in Detroit - Nicholas L. Caverly, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

• Methyl Isocyanate Gas and the Molecular Physiology of an Industrial Disaster - Deboleena Roy, Emory University

• “A War Without Violence”: Humanitarian Politics and the Flint Water Crisis - Elena Sobrino, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

• Aflatoxin and the Global Scale of Toxicity - Lucas Melvin Mueller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)