当前位置: X-MOL 学术Ann. Am. Assoc. Geogr. › 论文详情
Our official English website, www.x-mol.net, welcomes your feedback! (Note: you will need to create a separate account there.)
Contested Worldings of E-Waste Environmental Justice: Nonhuman Agency and E-Waste Scalvaging in Guiyu, China
Annals of the American Association of Geographers ( IF 3.982 ) Pub Date : 2021-04-27 , DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2021.1889353
Kun Wang 1 , Junxi Qian 2 , Shenjing He 3
Affiliation  

Current environmental justice (EJ) research is moving beyond the distributional paradigm to embrace frameworks that emphasize the plurality of EJs. This study proposes that actor-network theory (ANT), which foregrounds nonhuman agency and heterogeneous associations, holds great potential for pushing forward this research agenda. It presents an ANT-informed analysis of the plural epistemologies of EJ by focusing on a global e-waste scalvaging hub—Guiyu in China. E-waste is considered a fluid and emergent material actant. The multiplicity of e-waste materialities coconstitutes the disparate worldings of EJ, with a wide range of actors involved in the knowledge-making practices. Disparate EJ realities concerning e-waste scalvaging have been worlded and enacted through the heterogeneous associations among numerous nonhuman actors, including discarded electronic devices, environmental conditions, pollutants, toxic substances, artifacts, discourses, tools and techniques, and a variety of human stakeholders, ranging from nongovernmental organizations, media, and academics to local scalvagers relying on e-waste for livelihood and wealth. In tracing these heterogeneous associations, this study juxtaposes two competing EJ worldings related to the ontological indeterminacy of e-waste. It first problematizes the worlding of North-to-South dumping that not only mispresents the complex geographies of e-waste, but also epitomizes a simplified distributional model of EJ.Then it ventures to theorize an often-neglected and underresearched dimension: EJ as situated capabilities and functionings concerned by the local community. This study thus adds to ongoing efforts to advance pluralist epistemologies of EJ.

更新日期:2021-04-27
down
wechat
bug