Toxic Town

IBM, Pollution, and Industrial Risks

Bibliographic Data

ID19988774
AuthorsPeter C Little (0000-0001-6628-0867, corresponding author)
Year2016
Pages243
Publication date2016-04-19
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueToxic Town Ibm Pollution And Industrial Risks (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherNew York University Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.18574/nyu/9780814760697.001.0001
OpenAlexW4241438012
ISBN9780814760697
Open LibraryOL26085023M
Google Books8Q0UCgAAQBAJ
LanguageEN
Citations received26

In 1924, IBM built its first plant in Endicott, New York. Now, Endicott is a contested toxic waste site. With its landscape thoroughly contaminated by carcinogens, Endicott is the subject of one of the nation's largest corporate-state mitigation efforts. Yet despite the efforts of IBM and the U.S. government, Endicott residents remain skeptical that the mitigation systems employed were designed with their best interests at heart. This book tracks and critically diagnoses the experiences of Endicott residents as they learn to live with high-tech pollution, community transformation, scientific expertise, corporate-state power, and risk mitigation technologies. By weaving together the insights of anthropology, political ecology, disaster studies, and science and technology studies, the book explores questions of theoretical and practical importance for understanding the politics of risk and the ironies of technological disaster response in a time when IBM's stated mission is to build a "Smarter Planet." The book critically reflects on IBM's new corporate tagline, arguing for a political ecology of corporate social and environmental responsibility and accountability that places the social and environmental politics of risk mitigation front and center. Ultimately, the book argues that we will need much more than hollow corporate taglines, claims of corporate responsibility, and attempts to mitigate high-tech disasters to truly build a smarter planet

Accountability · Biopower · Corporate social responsibility · Environmental ethics · Government (linguistics) · IBM · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Risk society · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Environmental Justice and Health Disparities · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Computer industry · Environmental aspects · environmental conditions · Hazardous waste site remediation · Hazardous waste sites · International Business Machines Corporation · united states · Waste disposal

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