Giorgio Brocco: Articulations of Poisoning. Chronicity, Relationality, and Contextuality of Chlordecone Pollution in the French Antilles

Datum
13. Mai 2026 

MAE sem­i­nar (online)

Gior­gio Broc­co: „Artic­u­la­tions of Poi­son­ing. Chronic­i­ty, Rela­tion­al­i­ty, and Con­tex­tu­al­i­ty of Chlorde­cone Pol­lu­tion in the French Antilles”
May 13th 2026
3 PM CET on Zoom

LINK to join­ing the meeting
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MAE Sem­i­nar 2026

Artic­u­la­tions of Poi­son­ing. His­toric­i­ty, Rela­tion­al­i­ty, and Con­tex­tu­al­i­ty of Chlorde­cone Pol­lu­tion in the French Antilles

Chlorde­cone, a high­ly per­sis­tent organochlo­rine insec­ti­cide, was wide­ly applied to banana plan­ta­tions in Mar­tinique and Guade­loupe from 1972 until being banned in 1993. Decades lat­er, its residues still per­me­ate soil, water­ways, food sys­tems, and human bod­ies in the two islands. Clas­si­fied as both a car­cino­gen and an endocrine dis­rup­tor, the chem­i­cal has gen­er­at­ed wide­spread protests, epi­demi­o­log­i­cal debates, and polit­i­cal cri­tique. Draw­ing on six months of non-con­sec­u­tive ethno­graph­ic field­work con­duct­ed in Mar­tinique between 2017 and 2022, this arti­cle exam­ines how peo­ple inter­pret and nav­i­gate the chemical’s endur­ing effects. We devel­op the con­cept of „artic­u­la­tions of poi­son­ing” to describe the ways in which chlorde­cone is ren­dered mean­ing­ful, not sim­ply as a bio­med­ical or eco­log­i­cal risk, but as a lived, his­tor­i­cal­ly sed­i­ment­ed, and polit­i­cal­ly con­test­ed expe­ri­ence. These artic­u­la­tions unfold along three inter­con­nect­ed dimensions—historicity, rela­tion­al­i­ty, and contextuality—that shape how poi­son­ing is per­ceived, embod­ied, and resist­ed on the ground. Through the voic­es of activists, farm­ers, med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, insti­tu­tion­al actors, and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, we explore how poi­son­ing becomes entan­gled with colo­nial lega­cies, polit­i­cal debates, and the every­day strug­gle for envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice in the French Antilles.

Gior­gio Broc­co is a research asso­ciate and a lec­tur­er at the Depart­ment of Social and Cul­tur­al Anthro­pol­o­gy of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na. A mem­ber of the Research Group Health Mat­ters, he has been research­ing the mul­ti­ple ways humans con­ceive, inter­act with, and imag­ine the last­ing pres­ence of arti­fi­cial chem­i­cal mol­e­cules in the two French over­seas ter­ri­to­ries and the Caribbean islands of Mar­tinique and Guadeloupe.

His pre­vi­ous work has doc­u­ment­ed the life expe­ri­ences and socio-eco­nom­ic con­di­tions of peo­ple with albinism liv­ing in the East African country.

Gior­gio is the edi­tor of a new book series with Berghahn Books called Dis­abil­i­ty and Chronic­i­ty through the Ethno­graph­ic Lens.