Carl A Zimring Livres

From the age of Thomas Jefferson to the Memphis Public Workers strike of 1968 through the present day, ideas about race-- whites are "clean" and non-whites are "dirty"-- have shaped where people have lived, where people have worked, and how American society's wastes have been managed. Zimring draws on historical evidence from statesmen, scholars, sanitarians, novelists, activists, advertisements, and the United States Census of Population to reveal changing constructions of environmental racism, focusing on constructions of race and hygiene. The bigoted idea that non-whites are "dirty" remains deeply ingrained in the national psyche, continuing to shape social and environmental inequalities.

Aimed at students and scholars new to environmental history, the history of technology, and their nexus, this impressive synthesis looks outward and forward-identifying promising areas in more formative stages of intellectual development and current synergies with related areas that have emerged in the past few years, including environmental anthropology, discard studies, and posthumanism.