Uneven Toxic Worlds: Anthropological Engagements with Toxicity and Environment Justice

Datum
15. Okto­ber 2025 

CfP

CfP for Health and Envi­ron­men­tal Anthro­pol­o­gy con­fer­ence at Durham Uni­ver­si­ty: „Uneven Tox­ic Worlds: Anthro­po­log­i­cal Engage­ments with Tox­i­c­i­ty and Envi­ron­ment Justice” 

Raf­faele Ippoli­to, Peter C. Lit­tle and Camelia Dewan organ­ised a pan­el at the Health and Envi­ron­men­tal Anthro­pol­o­gy con­fer­ence at Durham Uni­ver­si­ty in April 2025. Based on this, they invite abstracts for our pro­posed edit­ed col­lec­tion „Uneven Tox­ic Worlds: Anthro­po­log­i­cal Engage­ments with Tox­i­c­i­ty and Envi­ron­ment Justice” 

Syn­op­sis:
This edit­ed vol­ume explores con­tem­po­rary anthro­po­log­i­cal engage­ments with tox­i­c­i­ty, pol­lu­tion, and con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in an uneven world marked by deep­en­ing social and envi­ron­men­tal inequal­i­ties and injus­tices. With con­tri­bu­tions rang­ing across the Glob­al North and South, the vol­ume aims to ground glob­al debates about tox­i­c­i­ty, health, and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice by spot­light­ing ethno­graph­ic stud­ies and engage­ments in com­mu­ni­ties where rela­tions and ten­sions between bod­ies, tox­ins, and ecolo­gies exist. The anchor­ing ques­tions of the vol­ume include, but are not lim­it­ed to: how can we envi­sion new envi­ron­men­tal jus­tices and ideas of envi­ron­men­tal health, while address­ing endur­ing polit­i­cal-eco­log­i­cal struc­tures of inequal­i­ty and tox­i­c­i­ty? What can con­tem­po­rary ethnog­ra­phy offer up at this rethink­ing and revi­sion­ing junc­ture? And how can we crit­i­cal­ly and cre­ative­ly engage and advance the study of the anthropology-toxicity-
envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice nexus, espe­cial­ly amidst a com­plex tox­ic world with no short­age of
tech­no-solu­tion­ism and right­eous tox­i­cs activism? By rein­forc­ing the over­lap­ping inter­ests of envi­ron­men­tal and med­ical anthro­po­log­i­cal schol­ar­ship focus­ing on tox­i­c­i­ty, the vol­ume seeks to make a time­ly con­tri­bu­tion to polit­i­cal ecol­o­gy and crit­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice studies.

If you would like to con­tribute to this vol­ume, please send us your pro­posed Chap­ter title and 300 word chap­ter abstract by Octo­ber 15.
Email, Camelia Dewan (camelia.dewan@antro.uu.se),
Raf­faele Ippoli­to (raffaele.ippolito@ouce.ox.ac.uk), and Peter Lit­tle (plittle@ric.edu)
Deci­sions on accept­ed pro­pos­als will be made by Octo­ber 25, with the expec­ta­tion that full Chap­ter con­tri­bu­tions (6,000 words) will be due by Jan­u­ary 15.