Permeable persons and plastic packaging in India

From Biomoral Substance Exchange to Chemotoxic Transmission

Bibliographic Data

ID2253752
AuthorsG Pathak (0000-0002-3244-0372, Department of Global Studies Aarhus University Jens Chr. Skous Vej 7, Building 1465, Room 328, 8000 Aarhus C Denmark, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume26
Issue4
Pages751-765
Publication date2020-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1359-0987 • E-ISSN: 1467-9655
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1467-9655.13365
OpenAlexW3084989991
LanguageEN
Citations received21
References cited62

In contemporary India, it has become commonplace to hear middle-class people speak of 'chemicals' in the environment, in food, and in everyday commodities. Anxieties revolve around the bodily absorption of these 'chemicals', and plastic packaging has come under particular scrutiny as a source of such leached substances. Although anthropological studies have highlighted South Asian conceptions of the person as permeable and affected, through the exchange of biomoral substances, by transactions with the environment, humans, and nonhumans, the concern about 'chemicals' references a different type of transfer: that of chemotoxic transmission. Such concern foregrounds new anxieties about the permeable body in the contaminated, ecologically damaged world of late modernity. The case of plastic packaging is illustrative of the differences between frameworks of biomoral substance exchange and chemotoxic transmission. In illuminating those differences, this article focuses on public concerns regarding the bodily absorption of 'chemicals', why these concerns are compelling as a political ecological critique of capitalist extraction, and the insights they can offer to anthropological research on the permeable body

Telecommunications · Transmission (telecommunications · Effects and risks of endocrine disrupting chemicals · Engineering · Microplastics and Plastic Pollution · Recycling and Waste Management Techniques

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