An examination of the daily grind of living with pollution in rural
China and of the varying forms of activism that develop in response.
Residents of rapidly industrializing rural areas in China live with
pollution every day. Villagers drink obviously tainted water and breathe
visibly dirty air, afflicted by a variety of ailments--from arthritis to
nosebleeds--that they ascribe to the effects of industrial pollution. In
Resigned Activism, Anna Lora-Wainwright explores the daily grind of
living with pollution in rural China and the varying forms of activism
that develop in response. This revised edition offers expanded
acknowledgment of the contributions of Lora-Wainwright's collaborators
in China.
Lora-Wainwright finds that claims of health or environmental damage are
politically sensitive, and that efforts to seek redress are frustrated
by limited access to scientific evidence, growing socioeconomic
inequalities, and complex local realities. Villagers, feeling powerless,
often come to accept pollution as part of the environment; their
activism is tempered by their resignation. Drawing on fieldwork done
with teams of collaborators, Lora-Wainwright offers three case studies
of "resigned activism" in rural China, examining the experiences of
villagers who live with the effects of phosphorous mining and fertilizer
production, lead and zinc mining, and electronic waste processing. The
book also includes extended summaries of the in-depth research carried
out by Ajiang Chen and his team in some of China's "cancer villages,"
village-sized clusters of high cancer incidence. These cases make clear
the staggering human costs of development and the deeply uneven
distribution of costs and benefits that underlie China's economic power.
