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"This book explores the political, economic, social, and environmental health relations and politics of the global tech and electronics industry. Peter Little argues that, in the digital age, we need greater synthesis of political ecology, ethnography, and technocapital critique"--

Peter C. Little examines the cultural, economic, and environmental health dimensions of electronic waste in Africa. Little draws on social science research to share the lived experiences of e-waste workers who burn bundles of electrical cables to extract copper, a practice that has raised concerns about toxic exposures to workers and urban environmental contamination. Little argues that interventions need to account for urban-rural migration and the sustainability of rural communities to reduce unnecessary toxic exposure.

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.

This article draws on ethnographic data to explore lived experiences and narratives of mitigation unfolding in a toxic waste site in Endicott, New York, the birthplace of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) and the location of a contentious U.S. EPA Superfund Site. It introduces the political ecology of mitigation concept and showcases how this critical approach to toxics repair can inform contemporary environmental social science discussions of environmental contamination and risk society. Envisioning the political ecology of mitigation, it is argued, calls for an ethnographic approach cognizant of politics of knowledge and expertise that invoke competing visions of mitigation in general and the efficacy of mitigation technologies and science in particular. Mitigation decisions are political and not simply scientific decisions. The political ecology of mitigation explored here pays close attention to the practices and processes through which toxics mitigation is wielded and negotiated. It shows how such practices and processes may inform contemporary perspectives on toxic neoliberal environments and ecologies.Key words: political ecology, toxics mitigation, IBM, neoliberalism, ethnography

Book Review: Knowledge and Environmental Policy: Re-imagining the boundards of science and politics

Book Review: Knowledge and Environmental Policy: Re-imagining the boundards of science and politics