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Flammable
Auyero, Javier; Swistun, Debora Alejandra
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Description for Flammable
Paperback. In this collaborative ethnography, Javier Auyero and Debora Alejandra Swistun-who was born and raised in the dreadfully polluted shantytown in Buenos Aires from which the book takes its name-vividly describe everyday life in Flammable and depict how this ongoing, slow-motion environmental disaster is experienced and understood by its residents. Num Pages: 208 pages, 37black and white half tones, 3 line illustrations. BIC Classification: JHB; JHM. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational. Dimension: 235 x 156 x 14. Weight in Grams: 336.
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 this book, Javier Auyero and Flammable resident Débora 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.
Product Details
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2009
Publisher
Oxford University Press Inc United States
Number of pages
208
Condition
New
Number of Pages
208
Place of Publication
New York, United States
ISBN
9780195372939
SKU
V9780195372939
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-51
About Auyero, Javier; Swistun, Debora Alejandra
Javier Auyero is Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Professor of Latin American Sociology at the University of Texas, and is the author of, among other books, Routine Politics and Collective Violence in Argentina. Débora Alejandra Swistun received her BA in Anthropology from the University of La Plata, Argentina.
Reviews for Flammable
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
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