"Trouble with Toxics": A presentation by Kim Fortun
Kim Fortun is a professor of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is the co-editor of the journal Cultural Anthropology and some of her recent publications include Advocacy After Bhopal: Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders (2001), "Scientific Imaginaries and Ethical Plateaus in Contemporary U.S. Toxicology" (co-authored with Mike Fortun, 2005), and "Figuring Out Ethnography," The Ends of Fieldwork (edited by George Marcus, forthcoming). Along with her husband Mike, she is also working on The Asthma Files, a collaborative, web-based project to draw together and explicate many different perspectives on asthma -- from different scientific disciplines, from health care providers and patients and from different geographic locales. Kim Fortun's visit is hosted by the Health and Society Group of Quadrant, a joint initiative of the University of Minnesota Press and the Institute for Advanced Study. Quadrant is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Toxics trouble health and the environment, established ways of doing science and setting policy, and the way people make everyday decisions about what to eat, drink, wear and drive. This presentation will map an array of reasons why toxics are difficult to recognize and deal with -- biologically, scientifically, politically, culturally -- then turn to recent developments that have given toxics greater visibility, animating possibilities for "better living with toxics." Such possibilities confound but are nonetheless imbricated with long- standing industry promises to provide "better living through chemistry."
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