Hazardous Travels. Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Simone Müller
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2016 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 290156503

• Final Report Year: 2024

Final Report Abstract

"Hazardous Travels. Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy" investigated the structures and dynamics of the international trade and transferal of waste and wasting practices between unequal partners from the 1970s until the 2000s. It covered a timeperiod marked by the onset of modern environmental governance, the globalization of environmental justice, the increasing formalization of global environmental protection through international institutions and conventions alongside an increasing global economic disparity and the tensions of the Cold War. In four projects, focused on case studies from North America, Germany, Ecuador, and India, Hazardous Travels extrapolated the discourses and practices of a global system built simultaneously on what some actors called “voluntary exchange,” others “garbage imperialism.” Collaboratively, the studies documented the working of the global world of waste as highly ambivalent but ultimately based on different valuations of human life. Hazardous Travels based its work on two concepts that in preliminary work PI Simone Müller had identified as key: (1) the mobility of waste material across an international patchwork of different, sometimes incompatible definitions of waste, its handling, and disposal and (2) the emergence of patterns of externalization, as exemplified by ‘ghost acres’ beyond national borders, in response to stricter environmental legislation post-1970. Results confirmed that the global waste economy developed in correlation with modern environmentalism and stricter environmental laws in some countries alongside a growing economic disparity between industrial and industrializing countries. Results also showed that these externalization patterns developed regardless of a Global North-Global South or West-East connection. Hazardous Travels marries the strands of global and environmental history with the inter- and transdisciplinary environmental humanities. We worked with archival material, oral history interviews, participant observation, and media items. We organized workshops and conferences, co-curated exhibitions and collaborated with artists, practitioners, and environmental justice activists. Results from this project include four book-length studies (one Habilitation and three PhD dissertations), peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, edited volumes, special issues, alongside blog posts, news articles, virtual exhibitions, and cocreated art works. As we came to understand that there is no ‘ultimate sink’ for toxic waste, we posit that a study on the dynamics and structures of the unequal global waste trade can provide important, humanities-based input for societal and policy solutions. This is particularly important now as the United Nations is preparing the launch of a Chemical IPCC. Lessons learned from Hazardous Travels can help shape new governance and policy directives that are mindful of historical legacies of contamination and notions of environmental justice alike.

Publications

• Umwelt- und Klimapolitik in den USA: Lokale Interessen und globale Verantwortung. Handbuch Politik USA, 1-16.
  Müller, Simone
  
• “The ‘Flying Dutchmen’: Ships’ Tales of Toxic Waste in a Globalized World” In: “Out of Sight, Out of Mind: The Politics and Culture of Waste.” edited by Christof Mauch, RCC Perspectives: Transformations in Environment and Society, 2016, no. 1, pp. 13–19.
  Müller, Simone M.
  
• “’Cut Holes and Sink ‘em’: Chemical Weapons Disposal and Cold War History as a History of Risk.” Historical Social Research, vol. 41, no. 1, 2016, pp. 263-286.
  Müller, Simone M.
  
• Corporate behaviour and ecological disaster: Dow Chemical and the Great Lakes mercury crisis, 1970–1972. Business History, 60(3), 399-422.
  Müller, Simone M.
  
• Toxic Floods: Let’s Talk About the Weather,” in Seeing the Woods. A Blog by the Rachel Carson Center, November 10, 2017
  Müller, Simone
  
• “Hazardous Cruises: Welcome to Toxic Paradise”. Seeing the Woods, November 17, 2017. Open Access
  Stuck, Jonas
  
• “Lives wasted: Garbage as a Forgotten Dimension of the European ‘Refugee Crisis’”. Seeing the Woods, 2017
  Feichtner, Maximilian & Theresa Leisgang
  
• “Mumbai Deluge 2017: Nowadays Rain Gods Have a New Tool– Plastic Bags!,” in Seeing the Woods. A Blog by the Rachel Carson Center, November 24, 2017
  Dhawan, Ayushi
  
• “Rettet die Erde vor den Ökonomen?: Lawrence Summers’ Memo und der Kampf um die Deutungshoheit über den internationalen Giftmüllhandel.“ Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, vol. 56, 2017, 353-373
  Müller, Simone M.
  
• A wave of interest and action for planet Earth?. International Organizations and the Media in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 204-231.
  Müller, Simone M.
  
• “Green City. Explorations and Visions of Urban Sustainability,” Special Issue, RCC Perspectives. Transformations in Environment and Society 1 (2018)
  Müller Simone & Annika Mattissek
  
• “Hazardous Hope – the debate. ‘An Academic Play in One Act.’” Seeing the Woods, October 9, 2018. Open Access
  Müller, Simone M.; Ayushi Dhawan; Maximilian Feichtner & Jonas Stuck
  
• “New Hope for Plastic Waste Pollution?” Seeing the Woods, November 20, 2018. Open Access.
  Stuck, Jonas
  
• “Plastic Passport,” in Seeing the Woods. A Blog by the Rachel Carson Center, December 6, 2018
  Müller, Simone
  
• For a dignified life. Remediation Practices in Ecuador”. In Antonia Alampi (ed.), Deadly Affairs, Kunsthal Extra City Cahier #5, 2019
  Feichtner, Maximilian
  
• Hidden Externalities: The Globalization of Hazardous Waste. Business History Review, 93(1), 51-74.
  Müller, Simone M.
  
• Water as the ultimate sink: Linking fresh and saltwater history. International Review of Environmental History, 5(1), 23-41.
  Müller, Simone M. & Stradling, David
  
• “Green Talks: Looking behind the scenes of Environmental Journalism.” Seeing the Woods, 2019
  Dhawan, Ayushi; Maximilian Feichtner & Jonas Stuck
  
• “Hazardous Travels: Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy,” in Antonia Alampi (ed.) Deadly Affairs, Kunsthal Extra City Cahier #5, 2019, 23-3
  Müller, Simone
  
• “New Hope for Plastic Waste Pollution?” In Antonia Alampi (ed.), Deadly Affairs, Kunsthal Extra City Cahier #5, 2019, 85–98. Open Access
  Stuck, Jonas
  
• Toxic Ghost Acres, o la dinámica de la eliminación de desechos de producción de petróleo en la Amazonía ecuatoriana, de los años setenta a noventa. Historia Ambiental Latinoamericana y Caribeña (HALAC) revista de la Solcha, 10(1), 23-51.
  Feichtner, Maximilian Fritz
  
• “Bioremediation Potentials: A Short Introduction.” Energy Today (Blog of the American Energy Society) 4, no. 13 (2020)
  Feichtner, Maximilian
  
• “Obituary: A Farewell to the Oriental Nicety (1986–2012). Long Gone but not Forgotten!” in Movements for the Air Munich Landing, eds. Alice Lamperti and Roxanne Mackie (Berlin: Ruksaldruck, 2020), 125– 128. Also republished in Environmental History Now, July 31, 2020
  Dhawan, Ayushi
  
• Conflicts. A Cultural History of the Sea in the Global Age, 95-117.
  Müller, Simone M.
  
• The Persistence of SS France:. The Persistence of Technology, 263-286.
  Dhawan, Ayushi
  
• Toxic Commons: Toxic Global Inequality in the Age of the Anthropocene. Environmental History, 26(3), 444-450.
  Müller, Simone M.
  
• “The Ghost Acres of Gujarat,” in Pipe Wrench Magazine, “Ghost Acres,” Issue Three, August/September2021
  Dhawan, Ayushi
  
• In die Verantwortung gezwungen. WerkstattGeschichte, 30(85), 35-54.
  Stuck, Jonas
  
• Obsolete Schiffe, funktionierende Geräte: Die Abwrackwerfte und Second-Hand- Märkte für elektronische Geräte in Alang” in Vigia Magazine for Technology and Society, “Electronic Waste,” Issue Two, November 2022
  Dhawan Ayushi
  
• Toxic timescapes. Examining toxicity across time and space. Ohio University Press
  Müller Simone & May-Brith Ohman Nielsen
  
• “Toxicity.” The Philosopher, vol. 110, no. 1, 2022, pp. 57-61
  Müller, Simone M.
  
• Dirty New Natures. Environment and Infrastructure, 141-160.
  Müller, Simone M.
  
• Forum Global Dis:connections. Journal of Modern European History, 21(1), 2-33.
  Wenzlhuemer, Roland; Menger, Tom; Huber, Valeska; Tworek, Heidi J. S.; Sivasundaram, Sujit; Müller, Simone M.; Wilkinson, Callie; Herren, Madeleine & Dusinberre, Martin
  
• Redistribute Toxicity. Environmental Humanities, 15(3), 104-118.
  Ektander, Caroline & Stuck, Jonas
  
• The Metamorphosis of the Amazon.
  Feichtner, Maximilian Fritz
  
• The Toxic Ship.
  Müller, Simone M.
  
• Greenpeace, Alang, and the Binary Labels that Defined the Existence of the Indian ShipbreakingIndustry. The Sage Handbook of Global Sociology, 557-569.
  Dhawan, Ayushi
  
• Hazardous Hope. Environmental Humanities, 16(2), 433-440.
  Dhawan, Ayushi & Müller, Simone M.
  
• „Mehr als nur Pfade im Wald: Erdölexploration im ecuadorianischen Amazonas.“ Die Urwälder Amazoniens. Lebensräume, Kontaktzonen, Projektionsfelder, edited by Sergej Gordon and Miriam Lay Brander, Neofelis, 2024. ISBN: 9783958084322
  Feichtner, Maximilian Fritz