The first comprehensive study of plastics, from the moment they were invented to the present day Expands the existing research on the materiality of plastic, considering it as both a disposable and durable product An essential read in times of environmental and health crises, when humanity must find new ways of existing and transform, among other things, our culture Packed with insight from 24 contributors across 17 chapters Plastics, Environment, Culture and the Politics of Waste examines plastic as a distinct cultural, political, and environmental phenomenon. It outlines the intricate relationship with plastic that humanity has been building over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, drawing on examples from history, the arts, and literature, as well as examining the place of plastics in the current health, environmental, and energy crises. The aim of this book is to reveal the complex nature of plastics, from their rapid incorporation into our advancing ways of life, to the reenvisioning of plastics' role in human life and how, through abundant production, consumption, and disposal of plastics, humanity has initiated a toxic invasion of natural environments and human and nonhuman bodies. Bringing together various perspectives from the humanities, this edited collection contributes to the ongoing research on plastics and petrocultures and emphasizes the crucial significance of addressing the plastic crisis through culture.

About the Author
Tatiana Konrad is Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna, Austria, as well as the Principal Investigator of the Air and Environmental Health in the (Post-)COVID-19 World project and the editor of the Environment, Health, and Well-being book series at Michigan State University Press. She is the author of Docu-Fictions of War: U.S. Interventionism in Film and Literature (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), the editor of Cold War II: Hollywood's Renewed Obsession with Russia (University Press of Mississippi, 2020) and Transportation and the Culture of Climate Change: Accelerating Ride to Global Crisis (West Virginia University Press, 2020), and a co-editor of Cultures of War in Graphic Novels: Violence, Trauma, and Memory (Rutgers University Press, 2018).

Reviews
"A collection as theoretically and conceptually powerful and colourful as its namesake can often be. But unlike the real thing, this plastic isn't a threat to the environment. It's an example of the intellectual and political work which desperately needs to be done if we are to stave off an environmental futures even grimmer than our eco-present. Required reading for anyone and everyone interested in environmental studies." -Imre Szeman, Institute for Environment, Conservation and Sustainability



Book Information
ISBN 9781399511735
Author Tatiana Konrad
Format Hardback
Page Count 352
Imprint Edinburgh University Press
Publisher Edinburgh University Press