Spectres of synthesis: Chemical geographies, neoliberal natures, and social substances

Abstract der Sitzung

The multiple crises of the recent past seem to have finally propelled us into a new chemical age. Promising to finally overcome the natural limits of economic growth and societal progress, chemicals have been drivers of industrial modernity. This positive imagination has long since changed, and many substances (Stoffe) and compounds have been invested with new, contrary meanings. Carbon plastics, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), synthetic pesticides, etc., all turned from symbols of an abundant and more equitable lifestyle into matters of concern, fuelling debates around contamination, containment and sustainable use.

With the new attention to substances, ‘the chemicalized nature of the living and more-than-living world’ (Romero et al. 2017, 160) has moved into the focus of attention throughout the humanities and social sciences. Under the heading of chemical geographies, scholars have started ‘to think more about chemistry and its role in shaping and interpreting the world’ (Barry 2017, 159). Such a perspective allows us to give greater prominence to the Stofflichkeit of humans and other creatures, of (future) agricultures and industries, of commodity production and everyday life. Taking up these multiple challenges, emergent epistemologies on chemicals are mobilized: Research in feminist and decolonial science studies on endocrine disruption, epigenetics, and environmental health uncertainties has challenged received understandings of chemical exposure; new chemical geography approaches bring together studies of production networks, the social lives of chemicals, and studies of toxicity; and contributions from critical political economy/ecology have highlighted the entanglement of the chemical drivers of consumerist lifestyles with the military complex and uneven global geographies of chemical production, use and exposure.

Against this background, this session aims at pushing what we regard as fruitful debates at the interface(s) of chemistry and human geography. Topics of submission may address, but are not limited to, the following questions:

• What counts as knowledge in debates around chemical substance and their effects? What is the role of scientific expertise, and which actors have the power to shape chemical policies?
• What are the geographical patterns of production, trade, and use of key chemical substances and how are these changing? What are the rationalities and logics driving decision-makers?
• What are the lived experiences of chemical exposures? How are substances embodied differently depending on a wide range of social differences and injustices?
• How are chemical geographies politically negotiated? To what extent have responsibilities been turned over to individual consumers and how are blame and responsibility gendered and racialized?
• On which grounds can we criticize the new significance of chemistry? What roles do social movements play, above all those anchored in marginalized communities and/or the global South?