What comes to mind when we think about toxicity in everyday life? It could be toxic relationships or masculinity – through to consumption, waste, governance and environmental harm. Alice Mah joins Uncommon Sense to discuss toxic expertise, waste colonialism and more.

The author of “Petrochemical Planet: Multiscalar Battles of Industrial Transformation” and “Plastic Unlimited: How Corporations are Fuelling the Ecological Crisis and What We Can Do About It”, Alice reflects on what the petrochemical industry has to do with sociology. From the impact on marginalised communities often having no choice but to live in a toxic environment through to the concept of “waste colonialism”.

She also introduces us to the work of Dr Max Liboiron and their work CLEAR (Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research) – an interdisciplinary plastic pollution laboratory whose methods foreground humility and good land relations. Alice explains how the work of CLEAR has impacted her and made her think a little differently when approaching her own work.

Guest: Alice Mah
Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong
Executive Producer: Alice Bloch
Guest Producer: Emma Houlton
Sound Engineer: David Crackles
Music: Joe Gardner
Artwork: Erin Aniker

Find more about Uncommon Sense

Episode Resources

By Alice Mah

• Petrochemical Planet
• Plastic Unlimited
• Toxic Expertise

From the Sociological Review Foundation

• Deep Time, Intergenerational Knowledge, and Socio-Ecological Futures – The Sociological Review Annual Lecture 2024 by Alice Mah
• Into the abyss: Monsters, minerals and deep-sea mining in Norway’s blue economy – Jennifer E. Telesca
• Climate Justice – magazine issue

Further resources

• “The Climate of History in a Planetary Age” – Dipesh Chakrabarty
• “Pollution Is Colonialism” – Max Liboiron
• “Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution” – Gerald Markowitz, David Rosner
• “The Unknowers: How Strategic Ignorance Rules the World” – Linsey McGoey
• Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR)
• “The Blue Planet” – documentary TV series presented by David Attenborough
• “Dark Waters” – film directed by Todd Haynes – based on Nathaniel Rich’s New York Times article “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare”

Production Note: This episode was recorded in July 2024.

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