Description

Thirty years after the Bhopal tragedy, this issue revisits the meaning of the disaster, its causes, and its consequences. The first section deals with the aftermath of the catastrophe, examining the struggle over the memory and memorialization of Bhopal and the lamentable failure of the medical and legal professions and systems to provide relief and justice to the survivors. The second section examines an example of toxic capital in action in northeast England, the failures of international regulation of chemical hazards, and the chemical warfare attack on Halabja in Kurdistan. The final section looks at resistance to the depredations of toxic capital, beginning with the movement for justice in Bhopal, while also considering recent struggles in India.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editors’ Introduction

I. Bhopal

Remembering Bhopal: Voices of Survivors
Rama Lakshmi and Shalini Sharma 

“Just like any other city”: The De-Gasification of the Bhopal Gas Relief System
Bridget Hanna

Criminal Failure and “The Chilling Effect”: A Short History of the Bhopal Criminal Prosecutions
Tim Edwards

II. Toxic Capital

Toxic Capital Everywhere: Mapping the Co-Ordinates of Regulatory Tolerance
Steve Tombs and David Whyte

Controlling Chemical Hazards: Global Governance, National Regulation?
Tomás Mac Sheoin

Chemicals for War and Chemicals for Peace: Poison Gas in Bhopal, India and Halabja, Kurdistan, Iraq
Indra Sinha

III. Resistance

Indian Media and the Struggle for Justice in Bhopal
Shalini Sharma

“All the World’s a Stage”: The Bhopal Movement’s Transnational Organizing Strategies at the 2012 Olympic Games
Bridget Botelho and Stephen Zavestoski

Transnational Anti-Corporate Campaigns
Tomás Mac Sheoin

Challenging Toxic Hegemony: Repression and Resistance in Rossport and the Niger Delta
Laurence Cox

Bhopal and Struggle for Social Justice in India
Madhuresh Kumar

BOOK REVIEWS

Toxics in China
Emily Hill

Saro-Wiwa Letters
Pauline Conroy