14 Section 3 – Discussion Questions

1. In the Section 3 studies, what kinds of activism did you read about and what kinds of heritage strategies did communities and advocates use? What kinds of change were the activists trying to create? Which seemed more effective and why?
2. Alice Mah’s foreword begins with the statement “Reckoning with toxic heritage is an urgent collective task.” From your reading of work in section 3 (and possibly in section 5), what collective action did you identify and how do different examples compare? What is gained or accomplished by collective action?
3. Heritage has been used as an instrument of reconciliation and healing in sites of violence such as conflict, genocide, and oppression, for example, the District Six Museum in Capetown and ICOM’s training program “Museums for reconciliation” (Scham and Yahya 2003). In this section, where did you see examples of or opportunities for healing in the wake of environmental harm and who is involved (think about human and other-than-humans). Are there examples of heritage and environmental healing or reconciliation where you live?
4. How does the work in this section reveal the disparate effects of toxicity across lines of social inequality?
5. Studies in Toxic Heritage demonstrate how toxic materials cross borders and temporal boundaries. How are the multiscalar impacts of toxic heritage experienced by communities, especially those dealing with the slow violence (Nixon 2011) of long-term exposures?

Nixon, Ron. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Scham, Sandra and Adel Yahya. (2003). “Heritage and Reconciliation.” Journal of Social Archaeology 3(3):399-416 DOI: 10.1177/14696053030033006