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Plastic Matter
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This book-length review traces plastic's relationships to geology, media, biology, and race, arguing that plastic's ubiquity — from the Arctic to Mariana Trench to nanoplastics in human cells — reflects the dominance of Western disposability culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Author Heather Davis contends that understanding plastic as matter reveals how modern society has come to treat materials, environments, and people as pliable and consumable.
Plastic is ubiquitous. It is in the Arctic, in the depths of the Mariana Trench, and in the high mountaintops of the Pyrenees. It is in the air we breathe and the water we drink. Nanoplastics penetrate our cell walls. Plastic is not just any material—it is emblematic of life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In Plastic Matter Heather Davis traces plastic’s relations to geology, media, biology, and race to show how matter itself has come to be understood as pliable, disposable, and consumable. The invention and widespread use of plastic, Davis contends, reveals the dominance of the Western orientation to matter and its assumption that matter exists to be endlessly manipulated and controlled by humans. Plastic’s materiality and pliability reinforces these expectations of what matter should be and do. Davis charts these relations to matter by mapping the queer multispecies relationships between humans and plastic-eating bacteria and analyzing photography that documents the racialized environmental violence of plastic production. In so doing, Davis provokes readers to reexamine their relationships to matter and life in light of plastic’s saturation.
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Plastic Matter. By Heather Davis
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This review examines Heather Davis's book 'Plastic Matter,' which argues that plastic has become so pervasive -- including in human blood, as newly documented research at the time of publication confirmed -- that it now fundamentally shapes contemporary human and non-human relations, raising questions of inheritance and ecological intimacy. The reviewer situates the book within the growing body of scientific evidence on ubiquitous plastic contamination, including the landmark discovery of microplastics in human blood.
Toward an anthropology of plastics
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Anthropological essay arguing that plastics' material ambivalence, ubiquity, and social effects demand sustained anthropological study across the full plastic lifecycle.
Review of Plastics, Environment, Culture, and the Politics of Waste, by Tatiana Konrad
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This is a review of a book, "Plastics, Environment, Culture, and the Politics of Waste," edited by Tatiana Konrad. The book gathers essays from multiple scholars examining how plastic production connects to oil industries, capitalism, and social systems, arguing that human relationships and economic structures, not just plastic itself, drive plastic waste and pollution.
Our life with plastic, a review of plastic product abuse in the age of consumerism
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This review examines the psychology, sociology, and culture of plastic consumerism alongside the scientific evidence for microplastic health harms, arguing that social sciences should complement natural science research by promoting rational product choices and awareness.
Waste Journeys
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This multidisciplinary study examined plastic waste as a material of the Anthropocene by tracing the journeys of plastic objects across cultural, natural, marine, and terrestrial landscapes, exploring how plastic's resilience makes it a defining and problematic artifact of modern civilization.
Research digests by email
When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.