POLS 161: Global Political Economy - States, Markets, and People in the Era of Globalization (HC)

Carl A. Zimring here draws on historical evidence from statesmen, scholars, sanitarians, novelists, activists, advertisements, and the United States Census of Population to reveal changing constructions of environmental racism. The material consequences of these attitudes endured and expanded through the twentieth century, shaping waste management systems and environmental inequalities that endure into the twenty-first century.

On June 30th, Chairman Kohl convened a hearing of the United States Special Committee on Aging on the problem of unused medications and how to dispose of them. Chairman Kohl announced plans to work with members of the Committee to develop a comprehensive package of legislative reforms to reduce waste and ensure safe disposal of medications.

This resource offers a comprehensive overview of the major U.S. environmental laws and approaches, strategies, standards, and enforcement techniques by which American law protects our environment and our health. The authors introduce the major environmental laws and evaluate issues, controversies and developments in environmental policy.

From Workshop to Waste Magnet presents Philadelphia's environmental history as a bracing case study in mismanagement and injustice. Sociologist Diane Sicotte digs deep into the city's past as a titan of American manufacturing to trace how only a few communities came to host nearly all of the area's polluting and waste disposal land uses. By examining the complex interactions among economic decline, federal regulations, local politics, and shifting ethnic demographics, she not only dissects what went wrong in Philadelphia but also identifies lessons for environmental justice activism today.

In the current age, the scale of waste management is geographic all while often relegating such undesired matter to invisibility as "matter out of place." Geographies of Trash reclaims the role of forms, technologies, economies and logistics of the waste system in the production of new aesthetics and politics of urbanism. The book charts the geographies of trash in Michigan across scales to propose five speculative projects that bring to visibility disciplinary controversies on the relations of technology, space and politics.

Garbage, considered both materially and culturally, elicits mixed responses. Our responsibility toward the objects we love and then discard is entangled with our responsibility toward the systems that make those objects. Histories of the Dustheap uses garbage, waste, and refuse to investigate the relationships between various systems--the local and the global, the economic and the ecological, the historical and the contemporary--and shows how this most democratic reality produces identities, social relations, and policies. Case studies include e-waste disposal in Bloomington, Indiana, Milwaukee's efforts to sell its sludge as fertilizer,and the plastics industry's attempt to wrap plastic bottles and bags in the mantle of freedom of choice. Also available as an ebook.

From St. Louis to New Orleans, there are poor and minority neighborhoods so beset by pollution that just living in them can be hazardous to your health. Due to entrenched segregation, zoning ordinances that privilege wealthier communities, or because businesses have found the "paths of least resistance,"; there are many hazardous waste and toxic facilities in these communities, leading residents to experience health and wellness problems on top of the race and class discrimination most already experience. This book examines the connections among residential segregation, zoning, and exposure to environmental hazards. Drawing on an array of historical and contemporary case studies from across the country, the author gives readers an understanding of environmental racism.

Joshua. Reno shows how North Americans have been shaped by their preferred means of disposal: sanitary landfill. Based on the author's fieldwork as a laborer at a large, transnational landfill near Detroit, the book argues that the landfills we create remake us in turn, often behind our backs and beneath our notice.

The relationship between federal and state water pollution policies is revealed and assessed in this incisive volume. Focusing on Congress s statutory directions in the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972 and state compliance, this study throws into relief the complex and often troubled relationship between the laws enacted by Congress and the public policies produced by state governments that implement them. Compliance at the state level can be affected and sometimes disturbed by state politics, particular policymaking processes, and the effects of federal oversight practices. As convincingly demonstrated in these pages, American water pollution policy reflects neither runaway bureaucracies nor Congressional control, but rather a complex intergovernmental process that is structured around Congress s statutory directions.