Navigating Crises of Scale in the Anthropocene

This article is available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the generous support from a global network of libraries as part of the Knowledge Unlatched Select initiative. Navigating Crises of Scale in the Anthropocene A Note to Engaged Anthropologists Gauri Pathak and Mark Nichter Abstract: In our contemporary era, anthropologists are increasingly tasked with studying crises of scale—that is, studying issues related to existential threats such as ecological degradation, inequality, and suffering amid landscapes of uncertainty. Such work takes an emotional toll that is rarely acknowledged in anthropological literature. In this article, using our work on plastics as a lens, we ask what anthropologists have to offer that is of real problem-solving value and how they can sustain their resilience during such engagement. We proffer a stance that we term ‘pragmatic melioration’, which focuses on harm reduction and problem solving (albeit imperfect) in the messiness of the here-and-now, and speak to how such a stance has helped us stay motivated despite reflexive distress. Keywords: Anthropocene, crises of scale, harm reduction, plasticine, plastics, pragmatic melioration, reflexive distress Mumbai in the middle of the monsoons in 2022, and plastics deluge the city. They lie all around on the ground—an abandoned carrier bag here, torn tobacco and shampoo sachets there, dirty and crushed bottles, cigarette butts, face masks, disintegrating Styrofoam, plastic sheeting, abandoned flipflops, a crumbling piece of plastic piping, plastic wrap, and much, much more. Whether these have been left there by people or by winds and rains and animals, or by some combination of all these, who knows. Municipal workers unload public garbage bins into the ‘Clean-Up’ trash collection trucks, and several plastics fall out onto the street. Plastics inundate the shops, as retailers and customers seek a material that promises protection from the damp. Amazon delivery vans courier packages wrapped in double layers of plastics, bound by plastic tape. The sea throws back mounds of plastics onto the shore after cyclone-induced rains. Dumping grounds in the city are overflowing. The lightweight plastic packaging disposed of there is prone to transport by winds and rain to locations outside the grounds, and leachate from the dumping grounds, undoubtedly teeming with micro- and nano-plastics, seeps into the soil and ground water (Chitra 2021). In Mumbai, plastic litter and waste are highly visible. However, the profusion of plastics and their contamination of local worlds is by no means exclusive to India or the Global South. All over the world, macro-plastics, whether from packaging, plastic products, synthetic fibres, or components of products, suffuse oceans, beaches, forests, fields, and other spaces. Our hair conditioners, makeup, the glues we use, the Teflon on our pans, flame retardants, paints on our walls—these are or contain other, less recognised plastics. Polymeric ‘forever chemicals’ and micro- and nano-plastics—resulting from the wear and tear of plastics—have entered and continue to enter the soil, water, food chain, human, animal, and plant bodies, and ecosystems; they can be found even in the farthest reaches of the globe (Cousins et al. 2022; de Souza Machado et al. 2018; Anthropology in Action, 30, no. 1 (Spring 2023): 24–32 © The Author(s) ISSN 0967-201X (Print) ISSN 1752-2285 (Online) doi:10.3167/aia.2023.300103 Navigating Crises of Scale in the Anthropocene Harvey and Watts 2018; Karami et al. 2017; Kosuth et al. 2018; MacLeod et al. 2021; Waring et al. 2018). Plastics are ‘materials that linger’ (Stanes and Gibson 2017). Plastic litter and dumped wastes can be assaults on the eyes and the nose. Plastic wastes can become breeding grounds for mosquitoes and other vectors of illness (Krystosik et al. 2020). The open burning of plastic wastes, a common method of disposal in places with inadequate, expensive, or inappropriate waste infrastructures, is associated with increased risks of heart disease, respiratory issues, neurological disorders, cancers, and birth defects, among other things (e.g. Kováts et al. 2022; Velis and Cook 2021; Verma et al. 2016; Wiedinmyer et al. 2014). Livestock in the vicinity of open burning show the presence of high levels of dioxins, linked to hormonal disorders, cancer, and immune system disruptions (Petrlik et al. 2022). Microplastics can negatively affect the structure of the soil and its ability to support plant growth (de Souza Machado et al. 2018; Yang et al. 2021). They also interact synergistically with organic contaminants in the soil to increase soil toxicity (Chang et al. 2022). The endocrine disrupting chemicals used as additives in plastics leach out of them to affect the hormonal health of both humans and animals; they have been linked to reproductive issues, adverse birth outcomes, metabolic syndrome disorders such as diabetes and obesity, and gynaecological disorders such as endometriosis and fibroids (Gore 2016). These are just the cases where harms are established; in the vast majority of cases, the harms of plastics on human and ecological health are shrouded in uncertainty and being elucidated. Plastics are also unruly and elude human managerial impulses. The dumping of plastic wastes produces leachate; incineration leads to toxicants that are rarely as efficiently managed as they should be; open burning is pervasive; ‘leaks’ of plastics outside waste management infrastructures are common; and microplastics and nano-plastics are always going to result from the production, consumption, and recycling of plastics anyway. We have been studying the lifecycle, social life, and human/more-than-human entanglements with plastics for almost a decade as part of a larger agenda focusing on cumulative toxicity. What this has revealed about the ecological ramifications and prospects of unbridled plastic production, consumption, and disposal has been nothing short of mind boggling. The scale of production and proliferation and the temporal persistence of synthetic organic polymers are so dramatic that a stratigraphical era of the Anthropocene, associated with a layer of plastic deposits from the 1950s onward, is being referred to | AiA as the ‘plasticine’ (Stager 2011). The total cumulative (primary) production of plastics from 1950 to 2017 is estimated to have been 9.2 billion tonnes. Production has been growing exponentially, such that half of all production occurred only after 2004. Thus, around half of all plastics made until the year 2017 were made in the 13 years after 2004 (Geyer 2020:16). Despite all the fanfare about recycling and a circular economy, less than 10 per cent of all plastics that are produced are recycled (UNEP n.d.); most plastic waste is mismanaged (OECD 2022). In the face of these staggering statistics and given a decade of field observations in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America, we find ourselves constantly fighting a sense of despair and exhaustion. Our world seems ever-more dependent on plastics and inescapably contaminated by plastic wastes; meanwhile, the public is subjected to greenwashing by industries so as not to disrupt the status quo, and apathy seems common. Such a sense of a crisis of scale is not unique to our work on plastics. It is shared by social science colleagues researching other consequences—from climate change to antibiotic resistance (e.g. MacLellan 2016; Orzch and Nichter 2008; Seeberg et al. 2022; Vince and Hardesty 2018)—of a ‘cannibal capitalism’ (Fraser 2022) that feeds itself through ecological destruction. Here, we address coping with the resultant feelings of despair and doubt as part of the work of an engaged anthropology (Nichter 2006) that is directed toward existential threats and carried out in landscapes of uncertainty. We speak to two key interrelated questions we kept running up against in our own work on plastics: given the scale, complexity, and messiness of the problem, what do anthropologists have to offer that is of real problem-solving value, and how do we maintain our emotional wellbeing as we do so? The Engaged Research Trajectory To answer these questions, it is necessary to chart the stages often encountered in an engaged research trajectory. In the initial stage, engaged anthropologists typically experience a sense of motivation as they discover an issue that is important and deserving of deeper investigation. For us, this began with the realisation that beyond examinations of plastics-as-waste within discard studies, few anthropological studies of plastics existed. As medical anthropologists interested in cumulative toxicities and the political ecology of health, we saw potential for an anthropology of plastics lying at the interface of medical anthropol- | 25 AiA | Gauri Pathak and Mark Nichter ogy, environmental anthropology, and science and technology studies. Our first couple of years were spent understanding patterns of plastic consumption and disposal in India, a country that we had both worked in for decades; we also systematically studied the stakeholders involved in plastic production, manufacturing, and distribution there (Pathak 2022b; Pathak and Nichter 2019). To be taken seriously when ‘studying up’ (Nader 1972) and talking to scientists, policymakers, and industry executives, we had to familiarise ourselves with technical terms, the basic chemistry of synthetic polymers, and their lifecycle. Exploratory fieldwork among environmental activists, industry representatives, and consumers of plastic packaging helped us gauge public perceptions of the harms and affordances of plastics and the semantic fields associated with them; media analyses allowed us to understand representations of plastic pollution and plastic control (Pathak 2020a, 2022a; Pathak and Nichter 2021). The next stage involved choosing a point of engagement. The more we learned, the more we came to see that plastic control would be much more complex than we initially thought. The issues related to plastics that were circulating in public discourses were just the tip of a very large iceberg. Plastic pollution was often conflated with litter, not just in public discourse but also in policy (Pathak 2020b). Efforts to tackle plastic pollution that focused on litter frequently ended up encouraging the open burning of plastic wastes (Latkar and Pathak forthcoming). At this stage, a sense of urgency compelled us to investigate open burning, explore ways of working with community groups to raise consciousness about its harms, and publish academic articles to draw attention to the ineffectiveness of existing laws and policies against such burning. We researched the open burning of plastic wastes in India and enlisted colleagues to study this phenomenon in Southeast Asia and Southern Africa (Pathak et al. forthcoming). This was foundational work required to approach plastic disposal options from the vantage point of a hierarchy of risks. That is, we examined the harms and risks of ways of using and disposing of plastics in the context of the perceptions of the harms and risks (including social risks) of alternatives. The third stage of our trajectory can best be characterised by a rising frustration with superficial representations of the ‘plastic problem’, greenwashing and gaslighting related to the challenges of plastic management, and unrealistic calls for total plastic bans. The harms of plastics are shrouded in uncer- 26 | tainty, and studies have tended to examine their effects in isolation. Given these indeterminacies and the potential for synergistic and cumulative interactions with other toxicants, we favoured the precautionary principle; this principle encourages policymakers to take precautionary measures when scientific evidence cannot definitively establish environmental or human health hazards but the stakes are high. A chorus of activists and plastic critics were offering similar perspectives. Where did that leave us? We spent the better part of the summer of 2022 pondering the unique role that we, as anthropologists, could play in the plastic control problem-solving process. During several discussions, we deliberated how we might walk the fine line between engaged research and activism, an issue long-debated in anthropology, and one which continues to have salience today (Fassin 2014; Fassin and Stoczkowski 2008; Johannsen 1992; Rappaport 1995; Tax 1988; Waterston 2020). Our deliberations led to considerations of the environmental and public health impact of plastic use; the affordances of plastics, especially for the poor; and the economic fallout of bans on manufacturers, waste pickers, and so on. We were also compelled to question alternatives to plastics and methods for plastic disposal. Were cloth bags or single-use paper alternatives, which have higher carbon footprints and are more water-intensive (DEFRA 2011; Edwards and Fry 2011; Mattila et al. 2011), better alternatives than certain types of single-use plastics? Should land be diverted to growing biodegradable alternatives to plastics when a lack of food security threatens so much of the human population? Given realities of poor regulation and oversight of incineration in India, should it be opposed or acknowledged as generally preferable to the existing alternatives of open burning, open dumping, and unregulated recycling? All choices involved trade-offs; we could only consider which options would be the lesser of the evils involved. Assessments also included consideration of the viability of alternatives and the time they would take to lobby for and implement. Should we tentatively support half-measures as best-case scenarios in the moment? If we did, would we be seen as part of the problem by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and activists calling for radical change in step with a ‘degrowth’ movement (Hickel 2021) to which we were sympathetic in principle? Such double-binds and self-doubts confounded us. They also had embodied effects—anxiety, exhaustion, and sleepless nights became familiar companions. We were torn between touting the need for Navigating Crises of Scale in the Anthropocene long-term structural changes toward reductions in the production and consumption of plastics and the need to do something actionable in the here-and-now to gain traction toward larger plastic control goals. We began to question the utility of interventions aimed, for example, at raising consciousness about the open burning of plastics in communities with no other viable options—how was increasing awareness of the harms of the practice ethical if a community could then do nothing about those harms? At this stage, we (Pathak more so than Nichter, who had experienced similar dilemmas in his work on tobacco control and antibiotic stewardship) oscillated between an angst which made us feel like zealous proselytisers for an impossible cause and a fatalistic resignation that stemmed from a sense that the problem was too big and the obstacles to change too numerous. In our darkest moments, studying plastics began to feel like a self-congratulatory and hollow career-building enterprise with nothing tangible to offer interlocutors, communities, or societies. Nonetheless, being reflexive anthropologists, we recognised that the dilemmas we were facing were important to unpack and reflect upon, not just for ourselves but also for the students we train. After all, in addition to encouraging students to engage in critical reflection about global threats to planetary health, we regularly present them with case studies of anthropologists who engage with these issues as a way of demonstrating our discipline’s larger relevance. It was, we felt, our ethical duty to be transparent about the affective consequences of the engaged anthropology path. We also wished to describe how we worked to stay motivated despite our reflexive distress. Anthropological Reflexivity We therefore first looked to anthropology’s recent history and how the discipline has assessed its role when it comes to matters of concern. Early in the last decade, Joel Robbins (2013) charted a shift in anthropology away from a focus on human difference toward a focus on the ‘suffering subject’. Centring the universality of suffering shed light on a shared sense of humanity across cultures, and it positioned anthropologists to bear witness to injustice, inequality, and violence as a necessary step in advocating for change. A few years later, Sherry Ortner (2016) drew attention to a related shift in anthropology tied to the rise of neoliberalism. Ortner referred to a ‘dark anthropology’ revolving around the study of | AiA power and inequality and the subjective experiences of oppression, depression, and hopelessness that followed and held up an ‘anthropology of the good’, involving studies of notions of a good life, caring, happiness, and resistance, as an important counter and complement. Work addressing an anthropology of the good triggered a renewed interest in morality and the ethics of anthropological engagement, sometimes referred to as anthropology’s ‘ethical turn’. A further turn was toward the more-than-human in considering contemporary ecological problems in the Anthropocene (e.g. Lorimer 2017; Tsing 2015). This entails a far more nuanced focus on the ecological and relational impact of human activity on macroand micro-companion species (such as the ones making up our microbiome) and acknowledgement of ecological precarity (e.g. biodiversity losses) and evolutionary change on different scales. As we reflected on these turns and the place of anthropology in the world, what we found lacking was adequate acknowledgement of the gravity of anthropologists’ feelings of—the often embodied—distress from bearing witness to and chronicling disparity, despair, and degradation. Neither was the sense of purpose and agency that could be gained from anthropological contributions to social and ecological movements noted. We took a question posed by Ortner to heart: ‘How can we be both realistic about the ugly realities of the world today and hopeful about the possibilities of changing them?’ (2016: 60). In practice, how could we study toxicity, violence, environmental degradation, inequality, and suffering without allowing it to taint our emotional wellbeing, our relationships, and our lives; how, as we stare into the abyss, do we prevent it from claiming us? If, ‘for our understanding of human social and cultural life, striving matters’ (Rogers 2009: 32), then how could we sustain our conviction that our striving matters? What we proffer next are our ways of thinking about engagement that have led us through dark times to a sense of resilience, humility, and hope. Finding Balance When thinking about engaged anthropology and plastic control, we must foreground how plastics have enhanced and vastly changed our lives. The most convincing examples of how our lives’ possibilities are tied to plastics probably come from healthcare (Roberts 2010)—plastics are crucial in medical interventions, from tubes to syringes to bladder bags | 27 AiA | Gauri Pathak and Mark Nichter to pacemakers—and healthcare is also where it is hardest to envision alternatives to the materials. Plastics help feed us, clothe us, shelter us, and transport us. They have expanded markets, transformed logistics, and democratised access to goods (Andrady and Neal 2009; Hawkins 2012). Plastics are also entangled with the lives of the poorest and most marginalised in society. Waste pickers see plastics—especially recyclable, high value, and easy to collect plastics such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET)—as crucial to their livelihoods. In countries such as India, an entire informal recycling sector subsists on materials such as plastics (Doron and Jeffrey 2018; Gill 2009). Plastics enable mobility, especially significant for migrant labourers and vulnerable populations (Aarti Latkar expands upon this in a forthcoming publication). They also enable quick and bulk provisioning of food and other supplies during natural or humanitarian disasters. Imagining a life completely devoid of all forms of plastics is impossible. In the absence of alternatives, we cannot eliminate the use of all plastics. During fieldwork, we have observed NGOs and environmental activists adopt a hard-line position when engaging with government officials and policymakers about the environmental necessity of severely restricting plastic production and circulation. This has proven to be a non-starter. Given the multiple stakeholders involved with plastics in one way or another, governments cannot afford to completely alienate the plastic industries (broadly conceived). Indeed, these industries have immense influence on policymaking and employ large swathes of the population. Moreover, advocating dramatic bans on plastic packaging or products ends up alienating not just the plastic industries but also numerous segments of the public that view bans as inconvenient, if not threatening. We witnessed the antagonism voiced by consumers when a single-use plastic ban was introduced in the Indian state of Maharashtra in 2018. Residents of the state, whose understanding of the plastic problem was largely of plastics-as-litter, complained as they scrambled to find new ways of buying, carrying, storing, and consuming their purchases. Focusing on the big, overwhelming transformations required to eliminate plastics ends up becoming a distraction from action that can—indeed needs—to be taken in the here-and-now to tackle its harms. Pragmatic Melioration Taking stock of the distributional consequences of policy changes related to the plastic lifecycle led us 28 | to a more targeted approach. Drawing from Nichter’s experiences working on antibiotic resistance, we have come to embrace the notion of a plastic stewardship, which: (1) recognises the merits of plastics when not overused or overproduced; and (2) focuses attention on those types of plastics and plastic products that are the most pernicious in terms of their human and environmental harms and those whose regulation and control will elicit the least amount of resistance. For example, we became interested in Styrofoam, a type of plastic that is toxic when burned and one of the least recyclable plastics, and small sachets, containing both plastic and metal (aluminium) layers and that are not conducive to reuse or recycling, as forms of plastic that need to be replaced with less harmful alternatives. After much thought, we have adopted four principles as part of our approach. First, we focus on the reduction of plastics that pose high risks to the environment. This entails reduced use of those plastics as well as better means of removing their wastes and existing residues from the environment, whether through advocating for improved use of conventional methods (if they exist) or for investment in more efficient and cost-effective technologies to do so (Pathak et al. forthcoming). Second, we have embraced a stance that we term ‘pragmatic melioration’. This draws from the work of the pragmatist moral philosophers John Dewey and William James, where they envisioned a position between optimism (that saw the world as headed for salvation) and pessimism (that deemed it irrevocably doomed) through a belief that the world can be meliorated through human action (Liszka 2021). Pragmatic melioration promotes problem solving in the here-and-now of an imperfect world as we push toward a future with more traction for solving larger aspects of the problem. This stance necessitates a commitment to building local problem-solving capacity as a process that can be generalised (see also Liboiron 2021). Third, we recognise that whereas harm reduction at the local level is not an ultimate goal, it is an intermediate goal that provides a sense of agency and that can lead to critical momentum for wider change. The ‘slow violence’ of accumulating mass-produced toxicants and contamination across the globe requires a ‘slow activism’ (Adams et al. 2014; Liboiron et al. 2018) that functions as a form of resistance and imagines a different future. Fourth, we push for community-based environmental literacy based on public understanding of science (PUS) tenets (Jenkins 2003; Stilgoe et al. 2014). PUS begins with an assessment of whether and how a problem Navigating Crises of Scale in the Anthropocene is understood and then raises consciousness through knowledge production that makes sense locally as opposed to just addressing deficits in a top-down fashion. This needs to begin early in the school system to include problem-solving activities that deliberate ways of dealing with issues at the local level. However, we vehemently resist alignment with plastic control campaigns that place responsibility for tackling plastic pollution solely on individual consumers. Pedagogical campaigns that merely ‘teach’ citizens not to litter or to consume differently end up giving producers and corporations a free pass for ‘business as usual’. Finally, given the scale of the plastic problem, we believe that community-based problem solving is not enough. Dialogue and negotiation between stakeholders, NGOs, and policymakers is required. When we started our work on plastics, we envisioned a role for anthropologists as mediators between environmental activists and those within the industry (Pathak and Nichter 2019). Over the years, our work has only strengthened our conviction that such a cultural broker role—which requires detailed knowledge of the plastic landscape and the stakes and agendas involved—is valuable and urgently needed. We contend that, as researchers, we have a role to play in the policy arena in terms of providing foundational information on dimensions such as: practices of plastic use, non-use, and disposal; plasticfree alternatives (whether practices or materials) that can be scaled up; and gaps and unanticipated issues related to waste and recycling infrastructures and policies. Adopting this overall approach has provided us with a sense of purpose, which has proven key to regaining and maintaining our emotional equilibrium. A support system of friends, family, and colleagues within and outside of anthropology functioned as sounding boards, provided a sense of solidarity, and helped us gain perspective. Our engagement with communities (student groups, organisational units involved in plastic waste reduction) brought us in contact with energetic volunteers whose enthusiasm was infectious and inspiring. Meanwhile, charting out paths of action with humility has given us a renewed, but tempered, sense of agency based on the recognition that small steps are needed for bigger steps in what will be a long march to plastic control. Humility and a tempering of our ambitions also proved crucial to our mental wellbeing and to a newfound sense of peace with our work. | AiA Conclusion Here, we have described some of our experiences of studying human and more-than-human entanglements with plastics. Given the sheer scale of the production, consumption, circulation, and disposal of plastics, these materials pose complex problems— they bring significant harms, in terms of adverse health and environmental consequences, but they also enable livelihoods and life possibilities. Studying these materials for almost a decade has forced us to grapple with questions regarding the relevance of our discipline, its role in tackling real-world problems, and the morality of our work in the face of crises of scale. As we increasingly reckon with the environmental degradation wrought by (unequal) human activity, we, within anthropology, must admit to the reflexive distress caused by such questions. We must also find ways to discover meaning and connection through our work, to prevent ourselves from succumbing to despair or cynicism. These feelings have embodied and relational effects, and learning to cope with them is part of the labour of an engaged anthropology. For us, a stance of pragmatic melioration has been critical to maintaining our emotional wellbeing. This is a stance that advocates action, albeit imperfect action, to reduce harm in the here-and-now as we work toward expanded alternatives in the future. It refuses to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. In the case of complex entanglements, such as with plastics, it is about the slow dismantling of those entanglements. Through that slow work, we can see possibilities emerge and imagine alternative ways of being. This stance has required us to change our temporal orientation, away from an opaque future toward the present, while still functioning in an anticipatory mode. At the end of the day, pragmatic melioration requires clear-eyed recognition of problems while working to expand the possibilities of a good life within the messiness of the world. In India, where we conduct much of our research, the lotus is revered by many as a plant that remains rooted in and surrounded by mud while nevertheless transcending the muck as it flowers; we remind ourselves often of this vision for our anthropological engagement with contemporary crises of scale. Acknowledgments: The research presented in this article is funded by a Carlsberg Young Researcher Fellowship (CF-20- | 29 AiA | Gauri Pathak and Mark Nichter 0151; Project, ‘Plastics and the Anthropocene: The Bads Associated with the Goods We Consume’). We are deeply grateful to all our interlocutors for their gracious participation and to our friends, family, and colleagues who helped us navigate the reflexive dilemmas presented here. Gauri Pathak is a medical anthropologist and an associate professor at the Department of Global Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark. 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