Over the course of the past century, there has been a sustained reflective engagement about environmental risks, disasters, and human vulnerability in our modern industrial world. This inquiry has raised a host of crucial questions. Just how safe is humanity in a world of toxic chemicals and industrial installations that have destructive potential? Is it feasible to prevent large-scale catastrophes like the ones in Bhopal, Chernobyl, and Fukushima and smaller-scale disasters such as oil spills and gas leaks? How do environmental hazards affect social and political orders? S. Ravi Rajan expertly synthesizes decades of public policy and academic discourse on how societies measure and ultimately come to terms with risk, danger, and vulnerability and offers a fresh, humanistic perspective for grappling with the new global scale and interconnectedness of these threats.
S. Ravi Rajan is Olga T. Griswold Chair and Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He also directs the Global Environmental Justice Observatory and hosts the Liminal Spaces podcast.
"S. Ravi Rajan provides an extended and critical reflection on impurity and danger in the technocene, exploring in great detail the ways that risk, disaster, and vulnerability have been implicated in discussions by a variety of disparate scholars and schools of thought across various disciplines in recent decades."—Ruth Sandwell, author of Powering Up Canada: The History of Power, Fuel, and Energy from 1600
"Rajan skillfully examines risk, disaster, and vulnerability from a social science perspective to expand our understanding of technological risks. The book should be read by students and scholars interested in social and political approaches to environmental studies and risk management."—Tim Forsyth, Professor of Environment and Development, London School of Economics and Political Science
"How safe is humankind in a world so deeply infused with toxic chemicals and a spectrum of other major industrial risks? This highly engaging book explores this question and many more with a refreshingly transdisciplinary framework, an innovative format focused on keywords and storytelling, and truly accessible language. And while I remain anxious about living in the technocene epoch, after reading this powerful series of essays I am much more confident about how I will move through this world going forward."—David N. Pellow, author of What Is Critical Environmental Justice?
"This book is a rare read that is provocative and passionate, as well as compelling and cogent. Rajan productively interrogates how risk, disaster, and vulnerability intertwine in an integrated and multilayered twenty-first century society. While socioeconomic inequality and injustices make it sometimes seem that resilience and security are tragically waning for many who inhabit this planet, Rajan provides critical and constructive guidance as well as hope for better and more sustainable futures for all."—Max Boykoff, Professor and Chair, Department of Environmental Studies, University of Colorado Boulder
176 pp.5.5 x 8.25Illus: 20 black and white illustrations
9780520392625$95.00|£80.00Hardcover
Jul 2023