Flammable

Javier Auyero is Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Professor of Latin American Sociology at the University of Texas, and is the author of, among other books, Routine Politics and Collective Violence in Argentina. Débora Alejandra Swistun received her BA in Anthropology from the University of La Plata, Argentina.

• Introduction ; 1. Villas del Riachuelo. Life amidst Hazards, Garbage, and Poison ; 2. The Compound and the Neighborhood ; 3. Toxic Wor(l)ds ; 4. The (Confused and Mistaken) Categories of the Dominated ; 5. Exposed Waiting ; 6. Collective Disbelief in Joint Action ; 7. The Social Production of Toxic Uncertainty ; 8. Ethnography and Environmental Suffering ; Acknowledgments ; Notes

The authors have accomplished an astounding analysis of the destruction-physical and psychological-of a people living in poverty, their world dominated by a multinational corporate giant whose toxic waste pollutes their everyday lives. This superb and moving political ethnography captures the meanings of contamination to the residents, who live in disaster-immobilized by the toxic uncertainty, powerless confusion, and mistake that ultimately normalize risk and danger.