Toxic Lunch in Bhopal and Chemical Publics

Bibliographic Data

ID5338147
AuthorsRahul Mukherjee (0000-0002-3439-0831, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume41
Issue5
Pages849-875
Publication date2016-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0162243916645196
OpenAlexW2338819298
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited22

On November 28, 2009, as part of events marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the disaster at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, gas survivors protested the contents of the report prepared by government scientists that mocked their complaints about contamination. The survivors shifted from the scientific document to a mediated lunch invitation performance, purporting to serve the same chemicals as food that the report had categorized as having no toxic effects. I argue that the lunch spread, consisting of soil and water from the pesticide plant, explicitly front-staged and highlighted the survivor's forced intimate relationship with such chemicals, in order to reshape public perception of risks from toxins. Chemical matter like sevin tar and naphthol tar bound politicians, scientists, corporations, affected communities, and activists together, as these stakeholders debated the potential effects of toxic substances. This gave rise to an issue-based "chemical public." Borrowing from such theoretical concepts as "ontologically heterogeneous publics" and "agential realism," I track the existing and emerging publics related to the disaster and the campaigns led by the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal advocacy group

Environmental ethics · Government (linguistics · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Publics · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Risk Perception and Management

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub