Advocacy after Bhopal
Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders
University of Chicago Press, 2001
Cloth: 978-0-226-25719-8 | Paper: 978-0-226-25720-4 | Electronic: 978-0-226-25718-1
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226257181.001.0001
Cloth: 978-0-226-25719-8 | Paper: 978-0-226-25720-4 | Electronic: 978-0-226-25718-1
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226257181.001.0001
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ABOUT THIS BOOKAUTHOR BIOGRAPHYTABLE OF CONTENTS
ABOUT THIS BOOK
The 1984 explosion of the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India was undisputedly one of the world's worst industrial disasters. Some have argued that the resulting litigation provided an "innovative model" for dealing with the global distribution of technological risk; others consider the disaster a turning point in environmental legislation; still others argue that Bhopal is what globalization looks like on the ground.
Kim Fortun explores these claims by focusing on the dynamics and paradoxes of advocacy in competing power domains. She moves from hospitals in India to meetings with lawyers, corporate executives, and environmental justice activists in the United States to show how the disaster and its effects remain with us. Spiraling outward from the victims' stories, the innovative narrative sheds light on the way advocacy works within a complex global system, calling into question conventional notions of responsibility and ethical conduct. Revealing the hopes and frustrations of advocacy, this moving work also counters the tendency to think of Bhopal as an isolated incident that "can't happen here."
Kim Fortun explores these claims by focusing on the dynamics and paradoxes of advocacy in competing power domains. She moves from hospitals in India to meetings with lawyers, corporate executives, and environmental justice activists in the United States to show how the disaster and its effects remain with us. Spiraling outward from the victims' stories, the innovative narrative sheds light on the way advocacy works within a complex global system, calling into question conventional notions of responsibility and ethical conduct. Revealing the hopes and frustrations of advocacy, this moving work also counters the tendency to think of Bhopal as an isolated incident that "can't happen here."
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Kim Fortun is an associate professor in the Science and Technology Studies Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Prologue: The Times
Introduction Advocacy, Ethnography, and Complex Systems
One Plaintive Response
Two Happening Here
Three Union Carbide, Having a Hand in Things
Four Working Perspectives
Five States of India
Six Situational Particularities
Seven Opposing India
Eight Women’s Movements
Nine Anarchism and Its Discontents
Ten Communities Concerned about Corporations
Eleven Green Consulting
Epilogue
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index