9 Activity 2.3 Toxic Heritage and Accountability

Associated Readings:

Ch. 7: Marina Weinberg and Valentina Figueroa, “Politics of Mining: Toxic Heritage in the Atacama Desert.”

Ch. 8: Peter Carskadon Little and Grace Abena Akese, “Toxic Landmarking and Technoprecarious Heritage in Ghana.”

Targeted Skills:

Analysis and Reflection

Suggested format:

Prompt for in-class discussion, structured debate, or assigned essay.

Directions:

The Introduction to Section 2 notes “Heritage is always entangled with notions of value, often involving conflicting and contested frameworks of meaning. For toxic heritage, this arena a contestation and meaning-making is particularly fraught because of the implications of culpability and accountability for past polluters, as well as the opportunities for resistance, advocacy, and other political actions in which extractivism is named and challenged.”

How is accountability, or lack thereof, of toxic legacies evident in the case of the Atacama Desert mining and in e-waste recycling in Ghana? How do global or transnational politics influence who is responsible for toxic impacts and who bears the burdens of its harms?

Variation on activity:

Identify a site of contamination in your community, such as a site listed on the EPA’s brownfields or Superfund list list, and learn as much as you can about the site in associated public records and in news coverage in local media. Who is responsible for the environmental damage? Who is responsible for the clean up or mitigation of the site? How do these responsible parties appear in the information you can find about the site? For example, whose voices are heard? Who is authoring the texts? What are their concerns? How is public discourse about the site framing accountability? Does the site seem to mean different things to different people?