×


 x 

Shopping cart
Peter C. Little - Toxic Town: IBM, Pollution, and Industrial Risks - 9780814770924 - V9780814770924
Stock image for illustration purposes only - book cover, edition or condition may vary.

Toxic Town: IBM, Pollution, and Industrial Risks

€ 47.27
FREE Delivery in Ireland
Description for Toxic Town: IBM, Pollution, and Industrial Risks Paperback.

Shows the risks of high-tech pollution through a study of an IBM plant's effects on a New York town
In 1924, IBM built its first plant in Endicott, New York. Now, Endicott is a contested toxic waste site. With its landscape thoroughly contaminated by carcinogens, Endicott is the subject of one of the nation’s largest corporate-state mitigation efforts. Yet despite the efforts of IBM and the U.S. government, Endicott residents remain skeptical that the mitigation systems employed were designed with their best interests at heart.
In Toxic Town, Peter C. Little tracks and critically diagnoses the experiences of Endicott residents as they learn to live with high-tech pollution, community transformation, scientific expertise, corporate-state power, and risk mitigation technologies. By weaving together the insights of anthropology, political ecology, disaster studies, and science and technology studies, the book explores questions of theoretical and practical import for understanding the politics of risk and the ironies of technological disaster response in a time when IBM’s stated mission is to build a “Smarter Planet.”
Little critically reflects on IBM’s new corporate tagline, arguing for a political ecology of corporate social and environmental responsibility and accountability that places the social and environmental politics of risk mitigation front and center. Ultimately, Little argues that we will need much more than hollow corporate taglines, claims of corporate responsibility, and attempts to mitigate high-tech disasters to truly build a smarter planet.

Product Details

Format
Paperback
Publication date
2014
Publisher
New York University Press
Condition
New
Number of Pages
264
Place of Publication
New York, United States
ISBN
9780814770924
SKU
V9780814770924
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-50

About Peter C. Little
Peter C. Little is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Rhode Island College. He is the author of Toxic Town: IBM, Pollution, and Industrial Risks (NYU Press, 2014).

Reviews for Toxic Town: IBM, Pollution, and Industrial Risks
"This carefully crafted ethnographic account affirms the deep and adverse footprint of market-based industrial production on contemporary human lives and communities. By exploring the personal experience of exposure to the toxic risk produced by irresponsible corporate actions in a contaminated community, Little tells the occupational and environment story of our times: deindustrialization has left behind doubly damaged communities but helped to spark hope-affirming grassroots activism. This book makes clear the contributions of anthropology to the framing of a political ecological theory of human-environmental relations."
Merrill Singer,University of Connecticut at Storrs "This intense local study offers an important contribution, melding a keen application of key concepts in science and technology studies with ethnographic engagement with local people deeply affected by living with the consequences of the Computer Age.Toxic Townwill be of interest not only to anthropologists but to scholars across many disciplines who seek to understand triumphal technocapitalisms central role in creating and sustaining the pollution crisis."
Medical Anthropology Quarterly

Goodreads reviews for Toxic Town: IBM, Pollution, and Industrial Risks


Subscribe to our newsletter

News on special offers, signed editions & more!