Sponsor
National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (#1003598) and fellowship support from the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation, Community Forestry and Environmental Research Partnerships, and the Roselyn Lindheim Award in Environmental Design and Public Health
Document Type
Post-Print
Publication Date
7-2015
Subjects
Soil geomorphology, Urban soils, Soil pollution, Lead (Pb), Anthropogenic soils
Abstract
Anthropogenic lead (Pb) is widespread in urban soils given its widespread deposition over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries via a range of point- and non-point sources, including industrial waste and pollution, leaded paint, and automobile exhaust. While soil scientists and urban ecologists have documented soil Pb contamination in cities around the world, such analyses rarely move beyond proximal mechanisms to focus on more distal factors, notably the social processes mediating Pb accumulation in particular places. In this paper, I articulate a critical physical geography of urban soil Pb contamination that considers the dialectical coproduction of soil and social processes. Using soil Pb contamination in the flatlands of Oakland, California as an empirical case, I integrate conventional quantitative geochemical mapping with theory and qualitative methods regularly employed in urban political ecology to explain the various spatio-temporal processes that bifurcated the city into flatlands and hills, a topography that is as much physical as social, and one that is fundamental to differentiated soil Pb concentrations and the disproportionate impact on low-income people of color. I demonstrate how understanding soil contamination through the lens of social metabolism – with particular attention to the materiality of the socio-natural hybrids emerging from processes of capitalist urbanization – can complement conventional analyses, while contributing to a "material politics of place" to support struggles for environmental justice.
DOI
10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.07.010
Persistent Identifier
http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/15725
Citation Details
McClintock, N. (2015). A critical physical geography of urban soil contamination. Geoforum, 65, 69-85.
Description
This is the author's accepted manuscript subsequently published in Geoforum.
Copyright 2015, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationa lhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/