Advocacy after Bhopal - Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders

The 1984 explosion of the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India was undisputedly one of the world's worst industrial disasters. Some have argued that the litigation following the Bhopal disaster provided an "innovative model" for dealing with the global distribution of technological risk; others consider the disaster a turning point in environmental legislation; still others argue that Bhopal is what globalization looks like on the ground.

Kim Fortun explores these claims by focusing on the dynamics and paradoxes of advocacy in competing power domains. She moves from hospitals in India to meetings with lawyers, corporate executives, and environmental justice activists in the United States to show how the disaster and its effects remain with us. Spiraling outward from the gas victims' stories, Fortun's innovative narrative sheds light on the complex intertwined way advocacy works within a global system, calling into question conventional notions of responsibility and ethical conduct. Revealing the hopes and frustrations of advocacy, this moving work also counters the tendency to think of Bhopal as an isolated incident that "can't happen here."

About the author

Kim Fortun is an associate professor in the Science and Technology Studies Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Summary

In exploring the worldwide political and environmental aftermath of the Bhopal disaster in 1984, this text discusses various differing claims by focusing on the dynamics and paradoxes of advocacy in competing power domains.

Product details

• Authors: Kim Fortun, Fortun Kim
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 24.07.2001
• EAN: 9780226257204
• ISBN: 978-0-226-25720-4
• No. of pages: 488
• Dimensions: 152 mm x 228 mm x 23 mm
• Weight: 581 g
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Biology > Ecology; Non-fiction book > Nature, technology > Nature and society: general, reference works; Social sciences, law, business > Law > General, dictionaries; NATURE / Natural Disasters, LAW / General Practice, Natural disasters, Legal skills: advocacy, Advocacy