Alice Mah
Biographic Data
| ID | 240208 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alice Mah |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alice |
| FAMILY NAME | Mah |
| SIGNATURE | MAH A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Warwick |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8183-2527 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 196 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Competing axes of power in the global plastics treaty: Understanding the politics of progress and setbacks in negotiating a high-ambition agreement
Headlines in December 2024 proclaimed the “collapse” and “failure” of United Nations plastics treaty negotiations in Busan, South Korea. This is, however, an overly simplistic and pessimistic portrayal. Progress on less contentious issues was made, and the meeting was adjourned with a commitment to continue negotiating in 2025 on the basis of the “Chair’s text.” Significantly, at the closing plenary, a majority of states voiced support for a “hig…
Toxic, with Alice Mah
The Sociological Review Annual Lecture 2024: Alice Mah: Deep Time, Intergenerational Knowledge, and Socio-Ecological Futures
Professor Alice Mah, environmental and urban scholar and author, delivered the 2024 Sociological Review Annual Lecture at the Sociological Review Foundation's Undisciplining II conference in September 2024
Petrochemical Planet: Multiscalar Battles of Industrial Transformation
In Petrochemical Planet Alice Mah examines the changing nature of the petrochemical industry as it faces the existential threats of climate change and environmental activism. Drawing on research from high-level industry meetings, petrochemical plant tours, and polluted communities, Mah juxtaposes the petrochemical industry’s destructive corporate worldviews with environmental justice struggles in the United States, China, and Europe. She argues t…
Noxious deindustrialization: Experiences of precarity and pollution in Scotland’s petrochemical capital
This article introduces the concept of “noxious deindustrialization”—employment deindustrialization in areas where significantly noxious industries are still operating—and explores some implications of this paradox by studying community–industry relations in the Scottish petrochemical town of Grangemouth. In the heyday of “Boomtown Grangemouth” during the first three decades after World War II, there existed an implicit social contract between th…
Petrochemical transition narratives: Selling fossil fuel solutions in a decarbonizing world
Being integral to the fossil-based energy order and as a key driver of multiple and intersecting ecological crises, the petrochemical industry faces increasing pressures to transform. This paper examines how major petrochemical companies navigate these pressures. Drawing from literatures on discursive power, narratives, and neoGramscian political economy, we introduce the concept of narrative realignment as a nuanced iteration of corporate discur…
The tenacity of trust in petrochemical communities: Reckoning with risk on the Fawley Waterside (1997-2019)
Around the world, people living close to polluting industries have different perceptions of the risks of toxic exposure, ranging from anger to acceptance to denial. We draw attention to a case with relatively high levels of social trust, but also relatively high levels of risk perception: the communities living adjacent to the Fawley (UK) oil refinery and petrochemical complex, a site that has been operated by Esso since the early 1950s.Our findi…
Future-Proofing Capitalism: The Paradox of the Circular Economy for Plastics
The marine plastics crisis sparked a wave of corporate interest in the circular economy, a sustainable business model that aims to eliminate waste in industrial systems through recycling, reduction, reuse, and recovery. Drawing on debates about the role of corporations in global environmental governance, this article examines the rise of the circular economy as a dominant corporate sustainability concept, focusing on the flagship example of the c…
Introduction to Part I
Despite the imperative for change in a world of persistent inequality, racism, oppression and violence, difficulties arise once we try to bring about a transformation. As scholars, students and activists, we may want to change the world, but we are not separate, looking in, but rather part of the world ourselves. The book demonstrates that we are not in control: with all our academic rigour, we cannot know with certainty why the world is the way …
Introduction to Part III
Science and politics are impossible to disentangle within environmental justice (EJ) struggles. What counts as legitimate data, and whose voices count? How can local communities that face disproportionate toxic burdens effectively mobilize science to support their campaigns for environment justice? Scientific evidence of toxic exposure is often not sufficient to ensure adequate compensation, remediation, or recognition (Boudia and Jas 2014). As t…
Index
Toxic truths: Environmental justice and citizen science in a post-truth age
Political strategies for seeking environmental justice Introduction to Part III -Alice Mah 8 Legitimating confrontational discourses by local environmental groups: The case of air quality monitoring in a Spanish industrial area -Miguel A
Integration and Isolation in the Global Petrochemical Industry: A Multiscalar Corporate Network Analysis
The global petrochemical industry has long been characterized by stable patterns of Western corporate and geographic leadership, but since the early 2000s, the global playing field has changed significantly. China has overtaken the US and Europe as the world’s largest petrochemical producer, and other emerging economies have become global petrochemical players. Combining insights from scholarship on global corporate elites, world city networks, a…
Accumulated Injuries of Environmental Injustice: Living and Working with Petrochemical Pollution in Nanjing, China
This article examines perceptions of living and working with toxic pollution in two periurban petrochemical areas in Nanjing, China, a heavily polluted megacity on the Yangtze River. Despite the concentrated geography of the petrochemical industry in Nanjing, protests over pollution have been small scale and highly localized, paralleling dynamics in many “cancer villages” of rural China. This contrasts with high-profile anti-PX (paraxylene) prote…
A layover stop in the African American great migration: Identity, Ruination, and Memory
Gone Home challenges dominant representations of Appalachia as white, placing in the foreground the life histories of African Americans who hail from the coalfields of eastern Kentucky. The book reveals how mass migration shapes subjectivities, examining two generations of African Americans who migrated into and out of the coalfields between 1910 and 1970. The coalfields were a layover stop in an intergenerational migration from the rural South t…
Community
“Community” is an important, long‐standing, and contested sociological concept. It is one of the central concepts of both classical and contemporary sociology. This entry provides a brief overview of the concept of community within both these traditions, within sociological research in general, and within political discourse and social policy
Environmental justice in the age of big data: Challenging Toxic Blind Spots of Voice, Speed, and Expertise
In recent years, grassroots environmental justice activists have increasingly used big data techniques for monitoring, recording, and reporting toxic environmental exposures. Despite the promise of big data for environmental justice, there is a need to address structural barriers to making toxic environmental exposures visible, and to avoid over-relying on new digital methods and techniques as a panacea for problems of voice. The emphasis of real…
Port Cities and Global Legacies
Port cities have distinctive global dynamics, with long histories of casual labour, large migrant communities, and international trade networks. This in-depth comparative study examines contradictory global legacies across themes of urban identity, waterfront work and radicalism in key post-industrial port cities worldwide. \n \n
Out of the Blue, into the Black: Representing, Imagining, and Researching Port Cities
Port cities lie at the edge between black and blue. For centuries, writers have described port cities as exotic places of cosmopolitanism and vibrant cultural exchange, connected to the ‘blue’ of sea, sky, and dreams. Port cities are surrounded by blue, the blue of water lapping at shores, extending out into distant horizons. They are filled with the blue of longing, of imagining possibilities out at sea and in different lands. But port cities ar…
Housing the New Russia
The Dereliction Tourist: Ethical Issues of Conducting Research in Areas of Industrial Ruination
Dereliction tourism is the act of seeking out abandoned industrial sites as sites of aesthetic pleasure, leisure or adventure. Drawing on research in areas of industrial ruination in Russia, the UK and North America, this article examines the role of the 'dereliction tourist' as a way of critically reflecting on the ethics of 'outsider' research. Ethical problems are associated with both dereliction tourism and ethnographic research in areas of i…
Demolition for Development: A Critical Analysis of Official Urban Imaginaries in Past and Present UK Cities
This article analyses official urban imaginaries of "demolition for development" in two different UK cities and time periods: 1) the City Improvement Scheme in Birmingham (1875-1914) during a time of rapid industrial growth, and 2) a housing-led neighbourhood regeneration scheme in Walker, Newcastle upon Tyne (2000-2011) during a time of post-industrial uncertainty. The concept of the "official urban imaginary" is employed to critically examine a…
Human Rights and Ethical Reasoning: Capabilities, Conventions and Spheres of Public Action
This interdisciplinary article argues that human rights must be understood in terms of opportunities for social participation and that social and economic rights are integral to any discussion of the subject. We offer both a social constructionist and a normative framework for a sociology of human rights which reaches beyond liberal individualism, combining insights from the work of Amartya Sen and from French convention theory. Following Sen, we…
Memory, Uncertainty and Industrial Ruination: Walker Riverside, Newcastle upon Tyne
This article examines how local people's memories relate to processes of industrial decline and ruination in Walker Riverside, Newcastle upon Tyne, based on site observations and 30 semi-structured interviews conducted between June 2005 and March 2006, with a range of local people. Much of the recent literature concerning the relationships between memory and place focuses on the contrast between social reconstructions of official and unofficial c…
Devastation but also Home: Place Attachment in Areas of Industrial Decline
This article analyzes the phenomenon of place attachment to “home” in two areas of industrial decline: Walker, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), and Highland, Niagara Falls, New York (USA). The research contributes to theoretical and empirical literatures from sociology, anthropology, geography, environmental psychology, and material culture studies on notions of place, community, memory, and home. Despite socioeconomic deprivation and material devastati…
Environmental justice in the age of big data: Challenging Toxic Blind Spots of Voice, Speed, and Expertise
In recent years, grassroots environmental justice activists have increasingly used big data techniques for monitoring, recording, and reporting toxic environmental exposures. Despite the promise of big data for environmental justice, there is a need to address structural barriers to making toxic environmental exposures visible, and to avoid over-relying on new digital methods and techniques as a panacea for problems of voice. The emphasis of real…
Devastation but also Home: Place Attachment in Areas of Industrial Decline
This article analyzes the phenomenon of place attachment to “home” in two areas of industrial decline: Walker, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), and Highland, Niagara Falls, New York (USA). The research contributes to theoretical and empirical literatures from sociology, anthropology, geography, environmental psychology, and material culture studies on notions of place, community, memory, and home. Despite socioeconomic deprivation and material devastati…
Memory, Uncertainty and Industrial Ruination: Walker Riverside, Newcastle upon Tyne
This article examines how local people's memories relate to processes of industrial decline and ruination in Walker Riverside, Newcastle upon Tyne, based on site observations and 30 semi-structured interviews conducted between June 2005 and March 2006, with a range of local people. Much of the recent literature concerning the relationships between memory and place focuses on the contrast between social reconstructions of official and unofficial c…
Accumulated Injuries of Environmental Injustice: Living and Working with Petrochemical Pollution in Nanjing, China
This article examines perceptions of living and working with toxic pollution in two periurban petrochemical areas in Nanjing, China, a heavily polluted megacity on the Yangtze River. Despite the concentrated geography of the petrochemical industry in Nanjing, protests over pollution have been small scale and highly localized, paralleling dynamics in many “cancer villages” of rural China. This contrasts with high-profile anti-PX (paraxylene) prote…
Future-Proofing Capitalism: The Paradox of the Circular Economy for Plastics
The marine plastics crisis sparked a wave of corporate interest in the circular economy, a sustainable business model that aims to eliminate waste in industrial systems through recycling, reduction, reuse, and recovery. Drawing on debates about the role of corporations in global environmental governance, this article examines the rise of the circular economy as a dominant corporate sustainability concept, focusing on the flagship example of the c…
Toxic truths: Environmental justice and citizen science in a post-truth age
Political strategies for seeking environmental justice Introduction to Part III -Alice Mah 8 Legitimating confrontational discourses by local environmental groups: The case of air quality monitoring in a Spanish industrial area -Miguel A
Petrochemical transition narratives: Selling fossil fuel solutions in a decarbonizing world
Being integral to the fossil-based energy order and as a key driver of multiple and intersecting ecological crises, the petrochemical industry faces increasing pressures to transform. This paper examines how major petrochemical companies navigate these pressures. Drawing from literatures on discursive power, narratives, and neoGramscian political economy, we introduce the concept of narrative realignment as a nuanced iteration of corporate discur…
The Dereliction Tourist: Ethical Issues of Conducting Research in Areas of Industrial Ruination
Dereliction tourism is the act of seeking out abandoned industrial sites as sites of aesthetic pleasure, leisure or adventure. Drawing on research in areas of industrial ruination in Russia, the UK and North America, this article examines the role of the 'dereliction tourist' as a way of critically reflecting on the ethics of 'outsider' research. Ethical problems are associated with both dereliction tourism and ethnographic research in areas of i…
Demolition for Development: A Critical Analysis of Official Urban Imaginaries in Past and Present UK Cities
This article analyses official urban imaginaries of "demolition for development" in two different UK cities and time periods: 1) the City Improvement Scheme in Birmingham (1875-1914) during a time of rapid industrial growth, and 2) a housing-led neighbourhood regeneration scheme in Walker, Newcastle upon Tyne (2000-2011) during a time of post-industrial uncertainty. The concept of the "official urban imaginary" is employed to critically examine a…
Integration and Isolation in the Global Petrochemical Industry: A Multiscalar Corporate Network Analysis
The global petrochemical industry has long been characterized by stable patterns of Western corporate and geographic leadership, but since the early 2000s, the global playing field has changed significantly. China has overtaken the US and Europe as the world’s largest petrochemical producer, and other emerging economies have become global petrochemical players. Combining insights from scholarship on global corporate elites, world city networks, a…
Noxious deindustrialization: Experiences of precarity and pollution in Scotland’s petrochemical capital
This article introduces the concept of “noxious deindustrialization”—employment deindustrialization in areas where significantly noxious industries are still operating—and explores some implications of this paradox by studying community–industry relations in the Scottish petrochemical town of Grangemouth. In the heyday of “Boomtown Grangemouth” during the first three decades after World War II, there existed an implicit social contract between th…
Human Rights and Ethical Reasoning: Capabilities, Conventions and Spheres of Public Action
This interdisciplinary article argues that human rights must be understood in terms of opportunities for social participation and that social and economic rights are integral to any discussion of the subject. We offer both a social constructionist and a normative framework for a sociology of human rights which reaches beyond liberal individualism, combining insights from the work of Amartya Sen and from French convention theory. Following Sen, we…
Moral judgements and employment policies in Birmingham (1870‐1914): Multiplying the categories and treatments of the “undeserving”
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the justifying arguments of various Birmingham organisations between 1870 and 1914 in classifying and treating the unemployed. Using a capability approach, the paper will examine how employment policies in Birmingham during this period promoted or limited capabilities of work, life and voice. Finally, implications for labour market policies today will be discussed. Design/methodology/approach The th…
Devastation but also Home: Place Attachment in Areas of Industrial Decline
This article analyzes the phenomenon of place attachment to “home” in two areas of industrial decline: Walker, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), and Highland, Niagara Falls, New York (USA). The research contributes to theoretical and empirical literatures from sociology, anthropology, geography, environmental psychology, and material culture studies on notions of place, community, memory, and home. Despite socioeconomic deprivation and material devastati…
Moral judgements and employment policies in Birmingham (1870‐1914): Multiplying the categories and treatments of the “undeserving”
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the justifying arguments of various Birmingham organisations between 1870 and 1914 in classifying and treating the unemployed. Using a capability approach, the paper will examine how employment policies in Birmingham during this period promoted or limited capabilities of work, life and voice. Finally, implications for labour market policies today will be discussed. Design/methodology/approach The th…
Memory, Uncertainty and Industrial Ruination: Walker Riverside, Newcastle upon Tyne
This article examines how local people's memories relate to processes of industrial decline and ruination in Walker Riverside, Newcastle upon Tyne, based on site observations and 30 semi-structured interviews conducted between June 2005 and March 2006, with a range of local people. Much of the recent literature concerning the relationships between memory and place focuses on the contrast between social reconstructions of official and unofficial c…
Demolition for Development: A Critical Analysis of Official Urban Imaginaries in Past and Present UK Cities
This article analyses official urban imaginaries of "demolition for development" in two different UK cities and time periods: 1) the City Improvement Scheme in Birmingham (1875-1914) during a time of rapid industrial growth, and 2) a housing-led neighbourhood regeneration scheme in Walker, Newcastle upon Tyne (2000-2011) during a time of post-industrial uncertainty. The concept of the "official urban imaginary" is employed to critically examine a…
Human Rights and Ethical Reasoning: Capabilities, Conventions and Spheres of Public Action
This interdisciplinary article argues that human rights must be understood in terms of opportunities for social participation and that social and economic rights are integral to any discussion of the subject. We offer both a social constructionist and a normative framework for a sociology of human rights which reaches beyond liberal individualism, combining insights from the work of Amartya Sen and from French convention theory. Following Sen, we…
Port Cities and Global Legacies
Port cities have distinctive global dynamics, with long histories of casual labour, large migrant communities, and international trade networks. This in-depth comparative study examines contradictory global legacies across themes of urban identity, waterfront work and radicalism in key post-industrial port cities worldwide. \n \n
Out of the Blue, into the Black: Representing, Imagining, and Researching Port Cities
Port cities lie at the edge between black and blue. For centuries, writers have described port cities as exotic places of cosmopolitanism and vibrant cultural exchange, connected to the ‘blue’ of sea, sky, and dreams. Port cities are surrounded by blue, the blue of water lapping at shores, extending out into distant horizons. They are filled with the blue of longing, of imagining possibilities out at sea and in different lands. But port cities ar…
Housing the New Russia
The Dereliction Tourist: Ethical Issues of Conducting Research in Areas of Industrial Ruination
Dereliction tourism is the act of seeking out abandoned industrial sites as sites of aesthetic pleasure, leisure or adventure. Drawing on research in areas of industrial ruination in Russia, the UK and North America, this article examines the role of the 'dereliction tourist' as a way of critically reflecting on the ethics of 'outsider' research. Ethical problems are associated with both dereliction tourism and ethnographic research in areas of i…
Community
“Community” is an important, long‐standing, and contested sociological concept. It is one of the central concepts of both classical and contemporary sociology. This entry provides a brief overview of the concept of community within both these traditions, within sociological research in general, and within political discourse and social policy
Environmental justice in the age of big data: Challenging Toxic Blind Spots of Voice, Speed, and Expertise
In recent years, grassroots environmental justice activists have increasingly used big data techniques for monitoring, recording, and reporting toxic environmental exposures. Despite the promise of big data for environmental justice, there is a need to address structural barriers to making toxic environmental exposures visible, and to avoid over-relying on new digital methods and techniques as a panacea for problems of voice. The emphasis of real…
Accumulated Injuries of Environmental Injustice: Living and Working with Petrochemical Pollution in Nanjing, China
This article examines perceptions of living and working with toxic pollution in two periurban petrochemical areas in Nanjing, China, a heavily polluted megacity on the Yangtze River. Despite the concentrated geography of the petrochemical industry in Nanjing, protests over pollution have been small scale and highly localized, paralleling dynamics in many “cancer villages” of rural China. This contrasts with high-profile anti-PX (paraxylene) prote…
A layover stop in the African American great migration: Identity, Ruination, and Memory
Gone Home challenges dominant representations of Appalachia as white, placing in the foreground the life histories of African Americans who hail from the coalfields of eastern Kentucky. The book reveals how mass migration shapes subjectivities, examining two generations of African Americans who migrated into and out of the coalfields between 1910 and 1970. The coalfields were a layover stop in an intergenerational migration from the rural South t…
Introduction to Part I
Despite the imperative for change in a world of persistent inequality, racism, oppression and violence, difficulties arise once we try to bring about a transformation. As scholars, students and activists, we may want to change the world, but we are not separate, looking in, but rather part of the world ourselves. The book demonstrates that we are not in control: with all our academic rigour, we cannot know with certainty why the world is the way …
Introduction to Part III
Science and politics are impossible to disentangle within environmental justice (EJ) struggles. What counts as legitimate data, and whose voices count? How can local communities that face disproportionate toxic burdens effectively mobilize science to support their campaigns for environment justice? Scientific evidence of toxic exposure is often not sufficient to ensure adequate compensation, remediation, or recognition (Boudia and Jas 2014). As t…
Index
Toxic truths: Environmental justice and citizen science in a post-truth age
Political strategies for seeking environmental justice Introduction to Part III -Alice Mah 8 Legitimating confrontational discourses by local environmental groups: The case of air quality monitoring in a Spanish industrial area -Miguel A
Integration and Isolation in the Global Petrochemical Industry: A Multiscalar Corporate Network Analysis
The global petrochemical industry has long been characterized by stable patterns of Western corporate and geographic leadership, but since the early 2000s, the global playing field has changed significantly. China has overtaken the US and Europe as the world’s largest petrochemical producer, and other emerging economies have become global petrochemical players. Combining insights from scholarship on global corporate elites, world city networks, a…
Future-Proofing Capitalism: The Paradox of the Circular Economy for Plastics
The marine plastics crisis sparked a wave of corporate interest in the circular economy, a sustainable business model that aims to eliminate waste in industrial systems through recycling, reduction, reuse, and recovery. Drawing on debates about the role of corporations in global environmental governance, this article examines the rise of the circular economy as a dominant corporate sustainability concept, focusing on the flagship example of the c…
Noxious deindustrialization: Experiences of precarity and pollution in Scotland’s petrochemical capital
This article introduces the concept of “noxious deindustrialization”—employment deindustrialization in areas where significantly noxious industries are still operating—and explores some implications of this paradox by studying community–industry relations in the Scottish petrochemical town of Grangemouth. In the heyday of “Boomtown Grangemouth” during the first three decades after World War II, there existed an implicit social contract between th…
Petrochemical transition narratives: Selling fossil fuel solutions in a decarbonizing world
Being integral to the fossil-based energy order and as a key driver of multiple and intersecting ecological crises, the petrochemical industry faces increasing pressures to transform. This paper examines how major petrochemical companies navigate these pressures. Drawing from literatures on discursive power, narratives, and neoGramscian political economy, we introduce the concept of narrative realignment as a nuanced iteration of corporate discur…
The tenacity of trust in petrochemical communities: Reckoning with risk on the Fawley Waterside (1997-2019)
Around the world, people living close to polluting industries have different perceptions of the risks of toxic exposure, ranging from anger to acceptance to denial. We draw attention to a case with relatively high levels of social trust, but also relatively high levels of risk perception: the communities living adjacent to the Fawley (UK) oil refinery and petrochemical complex, a site that has been operated by Esso since the early 1950s.Our findi…
Petrochemical Planet: Multiscalar Battles of Industrial Transformation
In Petrochemical Planet Alice Mah examines the changing nature of the petrochemical industry as it faces the existential threats of climate change and environmental activism. Drawing on research from high-level industry meetings, petrochemical plant tours, and polluted communities, Mah juxtaposes the petrochemical industry’s destructive corporate worldviews with environmental justice struggles in the United States, China, and Europe. She argues t…
Toxic, with Alice Mah
The Sociological Review Annual Lecture 2024: Alice Mah: Deep Time, Intergenerational Knowledge, and Socio-Ecological Futures
Professor Alice Mah, environmental and urban scholar and author, delivered the 2024 Sociological Review Annual Lecture at the Sociological Review Foundation's Undisciplining II conference in September 2024
Political science (18 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (12 works) · Economics (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Business (7 works) · Engineering (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · History (6 works)