Toxic Heritage Legacies, Futures, and Environmental Injustice

Toxic Heritage addresses the heritage value of contamination and toxic sites and provides the first in-depth examination of toxic heritage as a global issue. Bringing together case studies, visual essays, and substantive chapters written by leading scholars from around the world, the volume provides a critical framing of the globally expanding field of toxic heritage. Authors from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and methodologies examine toxic heritage as both a material phenomenon and a concept. Organized into five thematic sections, the book explores the meaning and significance of toxic heritage, politics, narratives, affected communities, and activist approaches and interventions. It identifies critical issues and highlights areas of emerging research on the intersections of environmental harm with formal and informal memory practices, while also highlighting the resilience, advocacy, and creativity of communities, scholars, and heritage professionals in responding to the current environmental crises. Toxic Heritage is useful and relevant to scholars and students working across a range of disciplines, including heritage studies, environmental science, archaeology, anthropology, and geography.

Toxic Heritage: An Introduction ELIZABETH KRYDER-REID AND SARAH MAY   SECTION 1: Introduction: Framing Toxicity   1 Toxic Legacies of Slickens in California: A Mobile Heritage of Hydraulic Mining Debris GARETH HOSKINS   Visual Essay 1: Extraction Old and New: Toxic Legacies of Mining the Desert in Southwestern Africa MIKE HANNIS AND SIAN SULLIVAN   2 Of Blaes and Bings: The (Non)toxic Heritage of the West Lothian Oil Shale Industry JONATHAN GARDNER   3 When Toxic Heritage is Forever: Confronting PFAS Contamination and Toxicity as Lived Experience THOMAS W. PEARSON AND DANIEL RENFREW   4 Plasticity and Time: Using the Stress-Strain Curve as a Framework for Investigating the Wicked Problems of Marine Pollution and Climate Change JOHN SCHOFIELD AND CELMARA POCOCK   SECTION 2: Introduction: The Politics of Toxic Heritage   5 Heritage-Led Regeneration and the Sanitisation of Memory in the Lower Swansea Valley SARAH MAY   Case Study 1: Ghost Wrecks of the Anthropocene: An Enduring Toxic Legacy of the Pacific War MATTHEW CARTER, ASHLEY MEREDITH, AUGUSTINE C. KOHLER, RANGER WALTER, BILL JEFFERY, AND PAUL HEERSINK   6 Military Legacies and Indigenous Heritage in Canada’s Newest National Park Reserve LISA K. RANKIN, JULIA BRENAN, DAVID M. FINCH, SCOTT NEILSEN, AND ANATOLIJS VENOVCEVS   Case Study 2: Trash Fires as Toxic Heritage in Palestine SOPHIA STAMATOPOULOU-ROBBINS   7 Politics of Mining: Toxic Heritage in the Atacama Desert MARINA WEINBERG AND VALENTINA FIGUEROA   Case Study 3: Sticky, Stinky, Squalid: The Toxic Leachate of Households’ Waste in an Area of Urban Decay in Tehran (Iran) LEILA PAPOLI-YAZDI   8 Toxic Landmarking and Technoprecarious Heritage in Ghana PETER CARSKADON LITTLE AND GRACE ABENA AKESE   SECTION 3 Introduction: Affected Communities, Activism, and Agency   9 Reluctant Returns: Repatriating a Poisoned Past HOLLY CUSACK-MCVEIGH   Case Study 4: Public Memory of Toxic Displacement: Heavy Metal Contamination and Superfund Remediation in Federally Assisted Housing Communities ELIZABETH GRENNAN BROWNING   Visual Essay 2: Translating and Transforming Toxicity: Moving Between Ethnography and Graphic Art AMELIA FISKE AND JONAS FISCHER   10 Preservation by Demolition: Toxic Heritage in Contemporary China LORETTA I.T. LOU   11 Unwanted Legacy and Memory of the Milieu: Toxic Materials, Remediation, Habituation (Estarreja, Portugal) FABIENNE WATEAU, CARMEM REGINA GIONGO, DANIELA FIGUEIREDO, JOHNNY REIS, AND MANUELLE LAGO   12 Environmental and Embodied Agro-Toxic Heritage in Rural Uruguay: From Recognition to Transition to Sustainability Among Dairy Farmers VICTORIA EVIA, SANTIAGO ALZUGARAY, AND JAVIER TAKS   SECTION 4 Introduction: Narratives of Toxic Heritage   13 Dirty Laundry: The Toxic Heritage of Dry Cleaning in Indianapolis, Indiana ELIZABETH KRYDER-REID, OWEN DWYER, AND GABRIEL FILIPPELLI   Case Study 5: When Cleaning up the Battlefields from When Times of War Have Polluted Soils in Times of Peace: A Case Study of a Silent but Visible Toxic Legacy from the Great War DANIEL HUBÉ AND TOBIAS BAUSINGER   14 Toxic City: Industrial Residues, the Body and Community Activism as Heritage Practice in Glasgow ARTHUR MCIVOR   Case Study 6: Rubber as (Toxic) Heritage: Amazonian Knowledge and the Rubber Industry TIAGO SILVA ALVES MUNIZ   Case Study 7: Three Memory Frameworks on Chernobyl MATTEO BENUSSI   15 The Toxic Anthracite = Toxic Heritage PAUL A. SHACKEL   SECTION 5 Introduction: Approaches and Interventions   16 Environmental Justice Tours: Transformative Narratives of Struggle, Solidarity, and Activism ANA ISABEL BAPTISTA   Visual Essay 3: Getting the Lead Out, One Community at a Time GABRIEL FILIPPELLI   Case Study 8: Climate Museum UK: Practices in Response to the Traumasphere BRIDGET MCKENZIE   17 Toxic Heritage and Reparations: Activating Memory for Environmental and Climate Justice LIZ ŠEVCENKO            Case Study 9: From Leftovers to Takeover: Latent Insurgency Amidst the System’s Remnants ANA VALDERRAMA   Visual Essay 4: Taking Care of Nuclear Waste CORNELIUS HOLTORF   18 Toxic and Wasted: Artists Thinking About How to Engage With Material Futures ROSEMARY A. JOYCE   Conclusion: Why Toxic Heritage Matters ELIZABETH KRYDER-REID AND SARAH MAY   Index

Elizabeth Kryder-Reid is Chancellor’s Professor of Anthropology and Museum Studies and director of the Cultural Heritage Research Center, Indiana University, Indianapolis. Sarah May is a Senior Consultant in Cultural Heritage at the sustainable development consultancy, Arup.