trade

Hazardous Profits

Hazardous Profits

Chapter 4 of the virtual exhibition Toxic Relationships: Uncovering the Worlds of Hazardous Waste.

Toxic Relationships: Uncovering the Worlds of Hazardous Waste

Modern societies’ hazardous by-products cast a dark shadow over the planet. A threat to humans and the environment alike, hazardous waste comes in many guises: discarded batteries, asbestos, giant ships, or tailings from mining operations. While these objects might not seem dangerous at first sight, they have characteristics and components that make them potentially deadly. This virtual exhibition gives you an insight into the obscure world of hazardous waste, its questionable trade across the globe, and the people successfully fighting for safe and just waste management. The Hazardous Travels research team takes you on a journey both into our research and to the edges of our societies that many prefer not to see.

Maximilian Feichtner, Jonas Stuck, Ayushi Dhawan, Christina Lennartz, and Simone M. Müller

About the author

Feichtner, Maximilian
Feichtner, Maximilian

Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich, Germany

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Maximilian Feichtner studied Spanish, political science, and social sciences in Freiburg, Cape Town, and Bangkok. He participated in the Global Studies Programme and received a joint MA in social sciences from the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and the University of Cape Town in July 2016. Maximilian joined the DFG Emmy Noether Research Group “Hazardous Travels: Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy” at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich in April 2017. In 2021, he finished his PhD thesis with the title “The Metamorphosis of the Amazon: Oilmen, Hazardous Waste, and the Ecuadorean Rainforest in the 20th Century.” You can learn more about his project here.

orcid.org/0000-0003-1284-4086

Stuck, Jonas
Stuck, Jonas

Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich, Germany

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Jonas Stuck is a PhD student at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich, and part of the DFG Emmy Noether Research Group “Hazardous Travels: Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy.” He is working on the export of hazardous waste from West Germany to its East German neighbor during the Cold War. His research interests include the international trade of hazardous waste, the history of environmental citizen movements, and the intersection of science communication with the arts and academia. He graduated with an MA in Contemporary History from the Humboldt University Berlin, the Sciences Po Lyon and the Université Lumière Lyon 2. You can learn more about his project here.

Dhawan, Ayushi
Dhawan, Ayushi

Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich, Germany

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Ayushi Dhawan is currently undertaking a PhD in Environmental Humanities at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. She is a part of the DFG Emmy-Noether Research Group “Hazardous Travels: Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy.” With a background in history, her research focuses on the Alang Shipbreaking Industry in Gujarat, 1983–2012. She completed her BA Hons. and MA in History from the University of Delhi in 2014, before joining the foundation year at the University of Leiden in 2014–2015, supported by an ENCOMPASS Scholarship. Subsequently, she earned her research master’s degree in colonial and global history in 2017. She has written various blog posts for Seeing the Woods, Kunsthal Extra City #Cahier 5, and Environmental History Now. Learn more about here research project here.

Lennartz, Christina
Lennartz, Christina

Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich, Germany

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Christina Lennartz is currently pursuing her Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration at the Ludwig-Maximilians University. Before commencing her studies in 2017, she spent a year working on organic farms in Southern France, California, and Oregon, which sparked her initial interest in environmentalism and sustainability. Following her travels, she worked in the Berlin start-up scene and media industry as an editor as well as a project, content and social media media manager. She joined the DFG Emmy-Noether Research Group “Hazardous Travels: Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy” as a research assistant in September 2018.

Müller, Simone M.
Müller, Simone M.

Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich, Germany

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Dr. Simone M. Müller is Project Director and Principal Investigator of the DFG Emmy Noether Research Group “Hazardous Travels: Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy” at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich. She works at the intersection of globalization studies, economic and social history, and environmental humanities. Her research interests range from the international trade in hazardous waste material and the intellectual history of economic ecological thinking, to green city concepts and the study of ocean space. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, among them from the Smithsonian Institution, the Science History Institute, and the University of Pennsylvania. She is a member of the Young ZiF (Center for Interdisciplinary Research) of the University of Bielefeld and in 2017 was nominated as one of the leading female academics in her field by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Bosch Foundation. You can learn more about her research here.

orcid.org/0000-0003-1538-3131

Browse the exhibition

Exhibition Overview
Introduction
Containing Contamination
Waste Governance
Hazardous Profits
Structures of Inequality
Hazardous Hope
Graphic: “Toxic Inheritance”
About the Exhibition

The Northwest Passage Timeline: Maps and Expeditions

The Northwest Passage Timeline: Maps and Expeditions

This timelines about the history of the Northwest Passage takes its readers on a journey of discovery from the mid-fifteenth century to today. 

 

The Northwest Passage: Myth, Environment, and Resources

This exhibition tells the story of the Northwest Passage from the pursuit of a myth to the exploitation of natural resources. Historian Elena Baldassarri takes readers on a multimedia tour of the Arctic, featuring interactive maps, photographs, videos, and interviews with experts, scholars, and elders of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Canada.

Elena Baldassarri

About the author

Baldassarri, Elena
Baldassarri, Elena

Roma Tre University, Italy

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Elena Baldassarri is an Assistant Professor in North American History at the Humanistic Department of Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy. Her research interests focus on the history of Canada and the United States, and the relationship between cultural and social rights in Canada. Her most recent publications cover US environmental policy, Canada’s sovereignty over the lands and waters of the Arctic. In past she has obtained a Canada Grant (2012) at the John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien, Freie Universität Berlin, a Faculty Research Grants/Bourses de recherche International Council for Canadian Studies (ICCS) (2007), and a Travel Grant from the Italian Association for Canadian Studies (AISC) (2006). She is the author of several articles and books including Canada e Quebec: Un problema di identità nazionale (1947–70) [Canada and Quebec: a problem of national identity]. Roma: Viella, 2009, and has edited Percorsi migratori e accoglienza fra storia e politiche di gestione [Migration routes and migrant reception: history and policies], edited with Pia G. Celozzi Baldelli. Roma: Aracne, 2009, and La Guerra Fredda nella satira politica Est/Ovest [Cold War and political satire] edited with Pia G. Celozzi Baldelli. Roma: Aracne, 2010.

Browse the exhibition

Exhibition Overview
Introduction
Myth and Adventure
Sovereignty
Natural Resources
Security
Timeline
Further Reading

About the Exhibition

About the Exhibition

This exhibition shows some of the many links between the Neva River in St. Petersburg and the Viennese Danube discovered during the joint Russian-Austrian research project “The Long-Term Dynamics of Fish Populations and Ecosystems of European Rivers.”

“Commanding, Sovereign Stream”:
The Neva and the Viennese Danube in the History of Imperial Metropolitan Centers

The exhibition aims to reveal and visualize the power of mighty rivers so crucially important for the history of St. Petersburg and Vienna—the major imperial centers of continental Europe in the modern era.

Gertrud Haidvogl, Alexei Kraikovski, and Julia Lajus

About the author

Haidvogl, Gertrud
Haidvogl, Gertrud

Institute of Hydrobiology and Aquatic Ecosystem Management (IHG), University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Austria

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Gertrud Haidvogl studied history at the University of Vienna. She works at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, and is specialized in the history of riverine landscapes and historical changes of fish populations. Haidvogl is a member of the Center for Environmental History Vienna.

Kraikovski, Alexei
Kraikovski, Alexei

Laboratory for Environmental and Technological History at National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia

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Alexei Kraikovski graduated from St. Petersburg University and got his PhD in history from the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2005. He is Associate Professor of History and Senior Research Fellow at at the Laboratory for Environmental and Technological History at National Research University Higher School of Economics. His research interests include marine environmental history, urban history, the history of urban rivers, economic history, historical geography, and resource studies.

orcid.org/0000-0002-1355-7954

Lajus, Julia
Lajus, Julia

Laboratory for Environmental and Technological History at National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia

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Julia Lajus has a Candidate of Science degree (Russian PhD degree) from the Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Russian Academy of Sciences. She is Associate Professor of History and Leading Research Fellow at at the Laboratory for Environmental and Technological History at National Research University Higher School of Economics. Her research interests include the environmental history of biological resources, especially in marine and polar areas, and the history of field sciences such as fisheries and oceanography. Julia Lajus served as the vice president of the European Society of Environmental History (ESEH) from 2011-2015.

Browse the exhibition

Exhibition Overview
The Rivers and the Cities: A Brief Introduction
Fisheries & Fishers
Pollution & Industrialization
Changing Landscapes
Fish Consumption
Authors & Acknowledgements
The Environment & Society Portal is a project of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, an institute founded in 2009 as a joint initiative of LMU Munich and the Deutsches Museum. Read more about the Portal in English and in German.