Author:
Jarrige, François, 1978- author.
ImprintCambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2020]
Descriptionxiv, 459 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Note:Translation of: La contamination du monde : une histoire des pollutions à l'âge industriel by Éditions du Seuil in Paris, 2017.
Note:The industrialization and liberalization of environments (1700-1830) -- Sketches : an ancien régime of pollution -- New polluting alchemies -- The regulatory revolution -- Naturalizing pollutions in the age of progress (1830-1914) -- The dark side of progress -- Expertise in the face of denial and alarm -- Regulating and governing pollution -- New and massive scales of pollution: the toxic age (1914-1973) -- Industrial wars and pollution -- A high energy-consuming world -- Mass consumption, mass contamination -- The politics of pollution -- Epilogue : charging headlong in to the abyss.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references and index.
Note:"Once the source of circumscribed local nuisances, the effects of human activities on the environment have turned into global pollution. The climate is warming, the seas are acidifying, the species are disappearing, the bodies are altered: to give an account from a historical point of view makes it possible not to sink in the stupefaction or the discouragement vis-a-vis a process which seems to have become inevitable. Because the great movement of contamination of the world that opens with industrialization is above all a social and political fact, marked by successive cycles, power relations, inertia, cultural transformations. By embracing the history of pollution over three hundred years, on a global scale, François Jarrige and Thomas Le Roux explore conflicts and the organization of powers in the industrial age, but also the dynamics that have shaped capitalist modernity and his imaginary progress."-- Provided by publisher.
