To see accurate pricing, please choose your delivery country.
 
 
United States
£ GBP
All Shops

British Wildlife

8 issues per year 84 pages per issue Subscription only

British Wildlife is the leading natural history magazine in the UK, providing essential reading for both enthusiast and professional naturalists and wildlife conservationists. Published eight times a year, British Wildlife bridges the gap between popular writing and scientific literature through a combination of long-form articles, regular columns and reports, book reviews and letters.

Subscriptions from £33 per year

Conservation Land Management

4 issues per year 44 pages per issue Subscription only

Conservation Land Management (CLM) is a quarterly magazine that is widely regarded as essential reading for all who are involved in land management for nature conservation, across the British Isles. CLM includes long-form articles, events listings, publication reviews, new product information and updates, reports of conferences and letters.

Subscriptions from £26 per year
Academic & Professional Books  Environmental & Social Studies  Pollution & Remediation  Effects of Contaminants

Flammable Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown

By: Javier Auyero(Author), Débora Alejandra Swistun(Author)
188 pages, 37 b/w photos, 3 b/w illustrations
Flammable
Click to have a closer look
Select version
  • Flammable ISBN: 9780195372939 Paperback Jun 2009 In stock
    £23.99
    #181892
  • Flammable ISBN: 9780195372946 Hardback Nov 2009 Not in stock: Usually dispatched within 6 days
    £63.99
    #252651
Selected version: £23.99
About this book Contents Customer reviews Related titles

About this book

Surrounded by one of the largest petrochemical compounds in Argentina, a highly polluted river, a hazardous waste incinerator, and an unmonitored landfill, the shantytown Flammable suffers from rampant contamination of its soil, air, and water. In Flammable, Javier Auyero and Flammable resident Debora Alejandra Swistun draw upon archival research and two and a half years of fieldwork to explore the lived experiences of environmental suffering. Perhaps most interesting, the authors show that residents doubt or even deny the harmful impact of pollution on their lives.

This denial of the obvious occurs through a "labor of confusion" generated by state officials who frequently raise the issue of relocation and just as frequently suspend it; by doctors who say the illnesses are no different from those elsewhere, but tell patients they must leave the neighborhood; and by lawyers who encourage residents to hold out for a settlement. Auyero and Swistun vividly depict this slow-motion disaster, dissecting the manifold ways in which it is experienced by Flammable residents.

Contents

Introduction

1.: Villas del Riachuelo. Life amidst Hazards, Garbage, and Poison
2.: The Compound and the Neighborhood
3.: Toxic Wor(l)ds
4.: The (Confused and Mistaken) Categories of the Dominated
5.: Exposed Waiting
6.: Collective Disbelief in Joint Action
7.:The Social Production of Toxic Uncertainty
8.: Ethnography and Environmental Suffering

Acknowledgments
Notes

Customer Reviews

By: Javier Auyero(Author), Débora Alejandra Swistun(Author)
188 pages, 37 b/w photos, 3 b/w illustrations
Media reviews

"The authors have accomplished an astounding analysis of the destruction – physical and psychological – of a people living in poverty, their world dominated by a multinational corporate giant whose toxic waste pollutes their everyday lives. This superb and moving political ethnography captures the meanings of contamination to the residents, who live in disaster – immobilized by the toxic uncertainty, powerless confusion, and mistake that ultimately normalize risk and danger."
– Diane Vaughan, author of The Challenger Launch Decision

"In this stunning book, Auyero and Swistun dissect the 'slow-motion human and environmental disaster' wrought by the noxious mix of economic dispossession and extreme pollution in a slum of Buenos Aires. By disclosing how residents experience 'toxic uncertainty' in everyday life, they show why this poisonous habitat not only assaults their individual bodies, but also ravages their social defenses and cultural immunity. With its deft integration of fieldwork, social theory, and narrative, Flammable is a signal contribution that will be widely discussed, often emulated, but not surpassed for a long time to come."
– Loic Wacquant, author of Urban Outcasts

"This brilliant ethnography of a polluted shantytown opens a new theoretical and topical frontier for urban poverty studies. The authors show how impoverished, poisoned residents, compelled to scramble for their daily economic survival in the context of larger political economic forces, are buffeted by competing discourses of agents of the state and civil society. They become trapped in a misrecognized toxic environment that imposes tremendous and ongoing physical suffering, psychic anxiety, and paralyzing uncertainty on them."
– Philippe Bourgois, author of In Search of Respect

"A powerful study of environmental abuse and 'toxic suffering,' this will acquaint readers in a personal way with a troubling and too-common plight."
Publishers Weekly

" [...] Distinct from much of the social movement literature, and also the ethnographies of the poor."
Contemporary Sociology

Current promotions
New and Forthcoming BooksNHBS Moth TrapBritish Wildlife MagazineBuyers Guides