Skip to main content
Kent Academic Repository

Contesting toxics: struggles against hazardous waste

Rootes, Christopher (2009) Contesting toxics: struggles against hazardous waste. Environmental Politics, 18 (2). pp. 287-291. ISSN 0964-4016. (doi:10.1080/09644010802682668) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:37537)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09644010802682668

Abstract

(REVIEW ESSAY) Modern industrial processes have produced goods and chemicals on an

unprecedented scale. Directly and indirectly, they and the increasingly

numerous consumers of those goods have also produced prodigious and ever

increasing quantities of waste, and much of that waste consists of novel

compounds whose toxicity has only recently been recognised. Disposing of

waste has become an ever greater problem. The simple expedient of burying it

in holes in the ground has become increasingly problematic, especially as the

hazards of doing so have become more apparent. And so alternative and

purportedly safer and more effective means of dealing with waste have been

developed, often involving shipping waste over considerable distances in order

that it may be processed on an industrial scale. Not surprisingly, in this era of

increasing globalisation, just as the flow of manufactured goods extends

beyond the boundaries of nation states, so too the flow of hazardous waste

crosses borders. Transnational problems invite transnational responses. At

intergovernmental level, there have been successful attempts to establish

globally effective regimes to prohibit or restrict the production and trade in

hazardous substances, but both within and beyond states there continue to be

issues of contention as communities resist the dumping of waste and the siting

of facilities to dispose of waste. Some of these local campaigns have become

epic struggles whose stories are scarcely credible tales of skulduggery that are

remarkably revealing about the distribution and exercise of power in the

modern world.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1080/09644010802682668
Subjects: H Social Sciences
Divisions: Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research
Depositing User: Mita Mondal
Date Deposited: 12 Dec 2013 16:01 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:14 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/37537 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.