Provocative Plastics

Plastics have now been our most used materials for over fifty years. This book adopts a new approach, exploring plastics’ contribution from two perspectives: as a medium for making and their value in societal use. The first approach examines the multivalent nature of plastics materiality and their impact on creativity through the work of artists, designers and manufacturers. The second perspective explores attitudes to plastics and the different value systems applied to them through current research undertaken by design, materials and socio-cultural historians. The book addresses the environmental impact of plastics and elucidates the ways in which they can and must be part of the solution. The individual viewpoints are provocative and controversial but together they present a balanced and scholarly un-picking of the debate that surrounds this ubiquitous group of materials. The book is essential reading for a wide academic readership interested in the Arts and Humanities, especially Design and Design History; Anthropology; and Cultural, Material and Social Histories.

An argument for the centrality of the visual culture of waste—as seen in works by international contemporary artists—to the study of our ecological condition. Ecological crisis has driven contemporary artists to engage with waste in its most non-biodegradable forms: plastics, e-waste, toxic waste, garbage hermetically sealed in landfills. In this provocative and original book, Amanda Boetzkes links the increasing visualization of waste in contemporary art to the rise of the global oil economy and the emergence of ecological thinking. Often, when art is analyzed in relation to the political, scientific, or ecological climate, it is considered merely illustrative. Boetzkes argues that art is constitutive of an ecological consciousness, not simply an extension of it. The visual culture of waste is central to the study of the ecological condition. Boetzkes examines a series of works by an international roster of celebrated artists, including Thomas Hirschhorn, Francis Alÿs, Song Dong, Tara Donovan, Agnès Varda, Gabriel Orozco, and Mel Chin, among others, mapping waste art from its modernist origins to the development of a new waste imaginary generated by contemporary artists. Boetzkes argues that these artists do not offer a predictable or facile critique of consumer culture. Bearing this in mind, she explores the ambivalent relationship between waste (both aestheticized and reviled) and a global economic regime that curbs energy expenditure while promoting profitable forms of resource consumption.

The Routledge Handbook of Archaeology and Plastics investigates the archaeology of the contemporary world through the lens of its most distinguishing and problematic material. Plastics are ubiquitous and have been so for nearly three generations since they became widely used in the early 1950s. Plastics will persist for millennia, their legacies as toxic heritage being felt deep into the future. In this book – comprising 32 original, at times disturbing, and critically engaged contributions – scholars from archaeology and other cognate disciplines explore plastics from a number of different angles and perspectives. Together these contributions highlight the dilemma that plastics present: their usefulness on the one hand, and the threats they present to environmental health on the other. The volume also explores the lessons that archaeologists can learn from plastics, about episodes of mass production, consumption and toxicity in the past, and also – importantly – about the future. This important and timely collection will therefore be of interest to all archaeologists irrespective of their period of study, or their geographical focus, and to students of archaeology and cultural heritage. It will also be relevant for researchers and students in other fields of study that focus on plastics and their environmental and social impacts. Ultimately, this book concerns the contemporary world and the impact of people upon it, through the archaeological lens.

Arguing that architects' continued ignorance about plastics has prevented its use as a building material from becoming fully exploited, Billie Faircloth draws on a wide range of original data to explore its use and development. Essential reading.

Jeffrey Meikle traces Americans' ambivalent involvement with plastic from Bakelite radios and nylon stockings to Tupperware and polyester suits. He moves easily from the rise of the plastics industry to plastic's symbolic hold on style and the popular imagination. Meikle shows how America's enthusiasm for everything plastic has been complicated by environmental doubts and by the plasticity of postmodern existence. Throughout this witty, compelling history of material and metaphor, Meikle raises crucial issues in science and technology, manufacturing and marketing, design and architecture, and American consumer culture. A provocative conclusion suggests that plastic, endlessly malleable in the face of material desire, merges into the immaterial reality of future electronic media.

Intellectual property law has been interacting with nature for over two centuries. Despite this long history, this relationship has largely been ignored. Intellectual Property and the Design of Nature fills this gap by bringing together scholars from different disciplines to examine the important role that nature plays in intellectual property law. Based on the idea that many contemporary issues require a better understanding of these historical interactions, the book reflects on the ways intellectual property law has engaged with and understood nature in the past. The varied contributions show how the relationship between nature and intellectual property law is often more complex, permeable, and porous than is commonly recognized. Intellectual Property and the Design of Nature demonstrates the complex and changing role that nature has played in the history of intellectual property law. Each of the chapters casts a new light on these connections. A compelling read for everyone interested in exploring new perspectives in the field of intellectual property.

"Algae are mysterious and fascinating organisms that hold great potential for discovery and biotechnology." —Dr. Thierry Tonon, Department of Biology, University of York "Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; we should not distort it." —A.P.J. Abdul Kalam In this book, we emphasise the importance of algal biotechnology as a sustainable platform to replace the conventional fossil-based economy. With this focus, Volume 2 summarizes up-to-date literature knowledge and discusses the advances in algal cultivation, genetic improvement, wastewater treatment, resource recovery, commercial operation, and technoeconomic analysis of algal biotechnology. FEATURES Discusses in detail recent developments in algae cultivation and biomass harvesting Provides an overview of genetic engineering and algal-bacteria consortia to improve productivity Presents applications of algae in the area of wastewater treatment and resource recovery Provides case studies and technoeconomic analysis to understand the algal biorefinery Shashi Kant Bhatia, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Engineering, Konkuk University, Seoul, South Korea. Sanjeet Mehariya, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Chemistry, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden. Obulisamy Parthiba Karthikeyan, PhD, is a Research Scientist and Lecturer (Adjunct) in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, South Dakota, USA.

Although somewhat marginal in relation to the other senses, smell is the most potent way of anchoring ourselves to the world. We subconsciously find our place in it by sniffing our body, the body of the one next to us, the room in which we are, the culture with which we are familiar. There is an incessant olfactory flow consisting of bodies, human and nonhuman, that are agents of generation, consumption, diffusion, reproduction and dissolution of odours. As they move or pause, as they cluster with others or try to move away, these bodies constantly partake in this olfactory flow, this dense planetary swirl that leaves nothing outside. The law aims at presenting itself as rational and objective. Smell, on the other hand, is one of the least integrated senses in the legal edifice, in comparison to, say, seeing and hearing. This can be attributed mainly to the fact that sense-making of smell and law are different, even antithetical. Smell operates undercurrent, tickling the olfactory antennas of individual and collective bodies while habitually hiding behind other sensory volumes. Law, on the other hand, has an interest in appearing present, universal, constant. Olfactory sense-making relies on its elusiveness; legal sense-making invests in its obviousness. Yet, the two can interact in most unexpected ways, as this volume amply shows. If anything, smell airs the way in which law conceptualises and contextualises its own actuality. Smell brings law forth by allowing it to show its underbelly, its elusive sense-making that is invariably sacrificed in preference to the necessity of legal impressions of constancy. However, smell’s fragmentary, discontinuous and unstable nature, despite all the ordering that goes to it, poses a peculiar challenge to the law. This volume sets out to investigate this juncture.