Toxic Timescapes: Examining Toxicity across Time and Space

An interdisciplinary environmental humanities volume that explores human-environment relationships on our permanently polluted planet. While toxicity and pollution are ever present in modern daily life, politicians, juridical systems, media outlets, scholars, and the public alike show great difficulty in detecting, defining, monitoring, or generally coming to terms with them. This volume’s contributors argue that the source of this difficulty lies in the struggle to make sense of the intersecting temporal and spatial scales working on the human and more-than-human body, while continuing to acknowledge race, class, and gender in terms of global environmental justice and social inequality. The term toxic timescapes refers to this intricate intersectionality of time, space, and bodies in relation to toxic exposure. As a tool of analysis, it unpacks linear understandings of time and explores how harmful substances permeate temporal and physical space as both event and process. It equips scholars with new ways of creating data and conceptualizing the past, present, and future presence and possible effects of harmful substances and provides a theoretical framework for new environmental narratives. To think in terms of toxic timescapes is to radically shift our understanding of toxicants in the complex web of life. Toxicity, pollution, and modes of exposure are never static; therefore, dose, timing, velocity, mixture, frequency, and chronology matter as much as the geographic location and societal position of those exposed. Together, these factors create a specific toxic timescape that lies at the heart of each contributor’s narrative. Contributors from the disciplines of history, human geography, science and technology studies, philosophy, and political ecology come together to demonstrate the complex reality of a toxic existence. Their case studies span the globe as they observe the intersection of multiple times and spaces at such diverse locations as former battlefields in Vietnam, aging nuclear-weapon storage facilities in Greenland, waste deposits in southern Italy, chemical facilities along the Gulf of Mexico, and coral-breeding laboratories across the world.https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/oupress/1014/thumbnail.jp

Progress on trial: how national timescapes shape postcolonial reconciliation

This thesis argues that it is our very idea of progress, codified in law, which obstructs real progress when it comes to postcolonial reconciliation. This affects three discourses: (1) the academic debate on the rectification of historical injustice; (2) legal theory and practice in the fields of constitutional law, international criminal law and international human rights law; (3) the intensifying activist struggle for recognition of historically marginalised groups. Drawing on the methods of archival research, legal analysis and normative critique, I establish a comparative analysis of how different countries deal with their colonial past to find out why full historical reconciliation is so difficult to achieve. Part I searches for the origins of the globally dominant conception of progress and locates them firmly within the history of the West. Chapter 1 argues that the historical injustice debate is stuck because both proponents and opponents of redress rely on the same conception of time: Liberal Time. Chapter 2 traces the emergence of inherently progressive Liberal Time back to the impact which Christianity, the French Revolution and industrialisation had on European intellectual history. Chapter 3 shows how Liberal Time spread worldwide when it became a justification and tool for European imperial expansion. The conclusion of part I is thus that the conception of time that built Empire also impedes its dissolution. Part II engages in a comparative discourse analysis of three major trials in which the liberal Western ideal of progress was challenged. The trials reveal a shared imaginary of progress, but also differences in how national timescapes shape historical reconciliation. Chapter 4 shows that Britain’s cult of continuity makes the public acknowledgement of colonial wrongs comparatively easy. Chapter 5 posits that France’s foundational revolutionary rupture makes a productive dialogue about the past virtually impossible. Chapter 6 suggests that the US offers a synthesis between rupture and continuity, when measuring American progress against the ideals of the American Revolution. Chapter 7 distils these findings into the following predicament: the Western promise of progress cannot be fulfilled so long as our institutions defend an idea of progress which is itself oppressive and exclusionary

Hadrian’s Wall

Through the voices of over 20 Hadrian's Wall enthusiasts – chosen amongst prominent frontier scholars and archaeologists, re-enactors, curators, walkers and site managers – this volume celebrates the 1900th anniversary of Hadrian’s visit to Britain and the building of the Wall. Together, the authors explore issues such as the impact of environmental changes on archaeology and the innovative technologies used in monitoring and managing the Wall and its collections. The book highlights not only the ways in which Hadrian’s Wall can be protected for future generations, but also the ways in which it affects the identities of those who work and travel along it. Rather than a retrospective of work undertaken so far, or an attempt to impose theoretical frameworks onto a living landscape, it offers a realistic discussion of current issues and solutions in the exploration, management and protection of Hadrian’s Wall, from the point of view of those living, visiting, researching and working along it

Hadrian’s Wall

Through the voices of over 20 Hadrian's Wall enthusiasts – chosen amongst prominent frontier scholars and archaeologists, re-enactors, curators, walkers and site managers – this volume celebrates the 1900th anniversary of Hadrian’s visit to Britain and the building of the Wall. Together, the authors explore issues such as the impact of environmental changes on archaeology and the innovative technologies used in monitoring and managing the Wall and its collections. The book highlights not only the ways in which Hadrian’s Wall can be protected for future generations, but also the ways in which it affects the identities of those who work and travel along it. Rather than a retrospective of work undertaken so far, or an attempt to impose theoretical frameworks onto a living landscape, it offers a realistic discussion of current issues and solutions in the exploration, management and protection of Hadrian’s Wall, from the point of view of those living, visiting, researching and working along it

Archaeological and anthropological aspects of the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective

The intention of this research is to offer innovative ideas on methods that can be\ud utilised by academics and historians within a conflict context. The framework that\ud will support the overall research is from that of an archaeological, anthropological and\ud memory driven perspective. Discussion will turn to individual components such as\ud liminality, monumentality, the built environment and landscape theory highlighting\ud Nazi segregation policies. Analysis of ghettoisation, deportation and extermination\ud policy through archaeological sub-disciplines and anthropology as well as comparison\ud to other world atrocity sites will take place. This will illustrate that detection of\ud similar techniques of incarceration are recognisable as modes of controlling fear\ud whilst simultaneously achieving a terror regime.\ud Initially propaganda policy of the National Socialist Party in both pre and World War\ud II settings in Germany and throughout parts of Europe helped to fuel the already\ud present culture of antisemitism. A significant and sinister shift in decision-making\ud witnessed a move from persecution to exclusion and isolation that saw major cities\ud already damaged by invasion and warfare ‘holding’ Jews in purposefully\ud manufactured locations that was a preparatory step towards genocide. Ghettoisation\ud facilitated the next stage in the process, deportation by train to extermination centres,\ud as communities were despatched from ‘round-up’ points to ‘unknown destinations’\ud further east. At all times Jews were vulnerable and were placed into landscapes of\ud terror, although either the strong individual or Nazi methods of control, at times,\ud suppressed fear.\ud Arrival at industrialised death camps was the final stage of a journey for the majority\ud that culminated in death, but not before further measures that reduced the individual\ud to a state beyond life, a liminal entity in a place where extreme conditions prevailed.\ud Each component of the strategy was monitored and managed, as fear was\ud euphemistically dismissed by the perpetrator and the by-stander

Temporality and social movements: a political ethnography of activism in contemporary Turkey (2016-2018)

While social movement studies have developed extensive frameworks for studying the emergence, maintenance, and decline of social movements, temporal orientations and futurity have not been systematically mobilized as necessary explanatory dimensions of activism. This dissertation argues that activists' temporal orientations and future imaginings are crucial to understanding action, including organizational form, movement trajectories, and long-term projects. Futurity is particularly relevant and amenable to theorization in uncertain, politically volatile, and urgent times, when activist debates revolve around predictions, expectations, possibilities, and scenarios. I take grassroots activism in Istanbul, Turkey between 2016 and 2018 as a case in point to examine the changing dynamics of activism during regime change. Based on participant-observation at a local assembly that was established to campaign for the “no” vote in the constitutional referendum of 2017 supported by semi-structured, in-depth interviews with activists, this study follows the changes in activists' temporal orientations and their relationship to different aspects of activism. The dissertation begins with an examination of the organizational structure of the local “no” assembly as a product of activists' critical engagement with the past and the future, by looking at their re-reading of the Gezi protests of 2013. The analysis then moves on to the period around the 2017 referendum, when future imaginings, in the form of anticipatory scenarios about the near future, played a constitutive role in the decision-making processes of the assembly, and contending futures resulted in its disintegration. Lastly, as the referendum was left behind and as activists were faced with defeat at the 2018 presidential and general elections, their engagement with the distant future came to the fore, in the form of hope, which enabled and was enabled by a future-oriented narrative of historical embeddedness. To conclude, I argue that scholars of social movements should pay more attention to the role of possibilities and future imaginings in political action, as well as the open-endedness inherent in activism, especially at times marked by uncertainty and urgency

Designing Memory: The Junior Architects of the Imperial War Graves Commission and the Creation of a Spatial Memorial in the British War Cemeteries on the Western Front

The history of the Imperial and later Commonwealth War Graves Commission has been defined by the key personalities who formed and shaped its principles. Individuals such as Sir Fabian Ware, Sir Edwin Lutyens and Sir Herbert Baker have received a great deal of the limited attention that has been given to the organisation. Little consideration has been given to the design of the cemeteries beyond the principle of equal commemoration and virtually no consideration has been given to the role of the Junior Architects. This thesis will explore the architectural project undertaken on the old Western Front, examining the design policies and approaches taken by the Commission and by the cadre of Junior Architects to create a much more nuanced memorial to the experience of serving in the First World War. It will show how the decision to employ a group of young architects, all of whom had served in the British Army during the war and had a direct connection with the landscape they were working within, enabled an understanding of the war time experience to be retained with the architectural treatment of the cemeteries. Using the extant architecture of the Commission and supporting this with the original trench maps, cemetery plans and design notes, this thesis will show how role of the Junior Architect in the process was central to the creation of a memorial not only to the dead, but to the experience of war and to the spaces and places of the wartime landscape

Parks and Protected Areas: Mobilizing Knowledge for Effective Decision-Making

Parks and protected areas provide important services to nature and society. Park managers make difficult decisions to achieve their diverse mandates, and need current, relevant, and rigorous information. However, effective use of research provided by social scientists, natural scientists, local people, or Indigenous people is an ongoing challenge. Through case studies, this book examines knowledge mobilization in parks and protected areas, with a focus on successes and failures, barriers and enablers, diverse theoretical frameworks, and structural innovations. This book embraces the generation and use of knowledge, especially natural science, social science, local knowledge, and Indigenous knowledge, in relation to policy, planning, and management of parks and protected areas

Aesthetics of Gentrification Seductive Spaces and Exclusive Communities in the Neoliberal City

Gentrification is reshaping cities worldwide, resulting in seductive spaces and exclusive communities that aspire to innovation, creativity, sustainability, and technological sophistication. Gentrification is also contributing to growing social-spatial division and urban inequality and precarity. In a time of escalating housing crisis, unaffordable cities, and racial tension, scholars speak of eco-gentrification, techno-gentrification, super-gentrification, and planetary gentrification to describe the different forms and scales of involuntary displacement occurring in vulnerable communities in response to current patterns of development and the hype-driven discourses of the creative city, smart city, millennial city, and sustainable city. In this context, how do contemporary creative practices in art, architecture, and related fields help to produce or resist gentrification? What does gentrification look and feel like in specific sites and communities around the globe, and how is that appearance or feeling implicated in promoting stylized renewal to a privileged public? In what ways do the aesthetics of gentrification express contested conditions of migration and mobility? Addressing these questions, this book examines the relationship between aesthetics and gentrification in contemporary cities from multiple, comparative, global, and transnational perspectives

a tumblr book

"This book takes an extensive look at the many different types of users and cultures that comprise the popular social media platform Tumblr. Though it does not receive nearly as much attention as other social media such as Twitter or Facebook, Tumblr and its users have been hugely influential in creating and shifting popular culture, especially progressive youth culture, with the New York Times referring to 2014 as the dawning of the “age of Tumblr activism.”   Perfect for those unfamiliar with the platform as well as those who grew up on it, this volume contains essays and artwork that span many different topics: fandom; platform structure and design; race, gender and sexuality, including queer and trans identities; aesthetics; disability and mental health; and social media privacy and ethics. An entire generation of young people that is now beginning to influence mass culture and politics came of age on Tumblr, and this volume is an indispensable guide to the many ways this platform works.