Plastic Legacies Pollution, Persistence, and Politics

There is virtually nowhere on Earth today that remains untouched by plastic and ecosystems are evolving to adapt to this new context. While plastics have revolutionized our modern world, new and often unforeseen effects of plastic and its production are continually being discovered. Plastics are entangled in multiple ecological and social crises, from the plasticization of the oceans to the embeddedness of plastics in political hierarchies.

The complexities surrounding the global plastic crisis require an interdisciplinary approach and the materialities of plastic demand new temporalities of thought and action. Plastic Legacies brings together scholars from the fields of marine biology, psychology, anthropology, environmental studies, Indigenous studies, and media studies to investigate and address the urgent socio-ecological challenges brought about by plastics. Contributors consider the unpredictable nature of plastics and weigh actionable solutions and mitigation processes against the ever-changing situation. Moving beyond policy changes, this volume offers a critique of neoliberal approaches to tackling the plastics crisis and explores how politics and communicative action are key to implementing social, cultural, and economic change. 

About the Editors

Trisia Farrelly is a senior lecturer in social anthropology and a co-director of the Political Ecology Research Centre at Massey University, Aotearoa New Zealand. She is co-founder of the New Zealand Product Stewardship Council and the Aotearoa Plastic Pollution Alliance. Sy Taffel is a senior lecturer in media studies and co-director of the Political Ecology Research Centre at Massey University, Aotearoa New Zealand. He is the author of Digital Media Ecologies (Bloomsbury 2019). Ian Shaw is an author, broadcaster and academic. He has worked in government science, the pharmaceuticals industry, and in several universities. He is now Professor of Toxicology at the University of Canterbury.

Contributors: Sasha Adkins, Sven Bergmann, Stephanie Borrelle, Tridibesh Dey, Eva Giraud, Christina Gerhardt, John Holland, Deidre McKay, Laura McLauchlan, Mike Michael, Imogen Napper, Tina Ngata, Sabine Pahl, Padmapani L. Perez, Jennifer Provencher, Elyse Stanes, Johanne Tarpgaard, Richard Thompson, and Lei Xiaoyu.

Reviews

By knotting together ‘globalized consumer capitalism’ and the ensuing excess of plastics one can no longer deny the inherent connectivity of plastic pollution, persistence, and politics within the story of plastics. Plastic Legacies offers a significant contribution to the radical shift in understanding of and responding to a human-induced plastic waste crisis.

— Kelly-Ann MacAlpine, Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography

Table of Contents

1. Acknowledgements
2. Introduction: Our Plastic Inheritance
   Trisia Farrelly, Sy Taffel, and Ian Shaw
3. Part I. Pollution
   1. 1. Marine Litter: Are There Solutions to This Global Environmental Problem?
      Imogen E. Napper, Sabine Pahl, and Richard C. Thompson
   2. 2. Slow Violence: The Erosion of Marine Plastic Debris and of Human Health
      Sasha Adkins
   3. 3. How Seabirds and Indigenous Science Illustrate the Legacies of Plastics Pollution
      Stephanie B. Borrelle, Jennifer Provencher, and Tina Ngata
   4. 4. Dawn of the Plastisphere: An Experiment with Unpredictable Effects
      Sven Bergmann
4. Part II. Persistence
   1. 5. Plastiglomerate: Plastics, Geology, and the New Materialism of the Anthropocene
      Christina Gerhardt
   2. 6. Dressed in Plastic: The Persistence of Polyester Clothes
      Elyse Stanes
   3. 7. Caring for the Multiple Cares of Plastics
      Tridibesh Dey and Mike Michael
   4. 8. On Becoming a Massively Distributed Thing: Hedgehogs, Plastics, and the Bearable Lightness of Becoming
      Laura McLauchlan
5. Part III. Politics
   1. 9. Communicative Capitalism, Technological Solutionism, and The Ocean Cleanup
      Sy Taffel
   2. 10. Toward Large-Scale Social Change and Plastic Politics: An Anthropological Perspective on the Practices of a Danish Environmental Organization
      Johanne Tarpgaard
   3. 11. Plastics Talk/Talking Plastics: The Communicative Power of Plasticity
      Deirdre McKay, Padmapani Perez, and Lei Xiaoyu
   4. 12. Redressing the Faustian Bargains of Plastics Economies
      Trisia Farrelly, Ian Shaw, and John Holland
6. Conclusion: Where There’s a Will … Contesting Our Plastic Inheritance
   Trisia Farrelly
7. List of Contributors

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original author is credited.