PPL Faculty Fellow Kimberley Thomas (Department of Geography, Environment and Urban Studies) presents in our Colloquium Series

Sacrifice Zones and the Politics of Toxic Harm

Capitalism produces distinct and highly uneven geographies of extraction, production, development, and waste, with profound implications for social and environmental well-being. Activists, journalists, and academics condemn these dynamics through the strategic mobilization of vivid terminology, such as "slow violence" and "frontline community" that highlight the unique vulnerabilities that impacted communities face. Within this practice describing heavily polluted areas as "sacrifice zones" has become commonplace in recent decades as diverse groups resist their unwitting exposure to destructive and toxic industrial, municipal, and military activities. However, pollutants tend to seep, spill, leak, and drift from wherever they are concentrated, defying any notion of physical containment in one specific area. Accordingly, Dr. Thomas considers various cases of fugitive pollution to interrogate the assumptions of relative containment and [in]security that the concept of sacrifice zones implies.