Attuning to the chemosphere: Domestic Formaldehyde, Bodily Reasoning, and the Chemical Sublime

Cultural Anthropology

Volumn 30, Issue 3, 2015, Pages 368-393

  Shapiro, Nicholas ^a  

^a Department of Chemistry at Bryn Mawr College   (United States)

Author keywords

Affect; Anthropology of science; Bodily reasoning; Chemical exposure; Phenomenology

Indexed keywords

EID: 84939619236     PISSN: 08867356     EISSN: 15481360     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.14506/ca30.3.02     Document Type: Article

References (54)

1. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) 2014 "Medical Management Guidelines for Formaldehyde." October. http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/mmg/mmg.asp?id=216&tid=39.
2. Ahmed, Sara 2006 Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
3. Alaimo, Stacy 2010 Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
4. Altman, Rebecca Gasior, Rachel Morello-Frosch, Julia Green Brody, Ruthann Rudel, Phil Brown, and Mara Averick 2008 "Pollution Comes Home and Gets Personal: Women's Experience of Household Chemical Exposure." Journal of Health and Social Behavior 49, no. 4: 417-35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/002214650804900404.
5. American Chemistry Council (ACC) 2013 "FormaldehydeFacts.org." http://www.formaldehydefacts.org/.
6. Anderson, Ben 2009 "Affective Atmospheres." Emotion, Space and Society 2, no. 2: 77-81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2009.08.005.
7. Auyero, Javier, and Debora Swistun 2009 Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
8. Berlant, Lauren 2011 Cruel Optimism. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
9. Boudia, Soraya, and Nathalie Jas 2014 Powerless Science?: Science and Politics in a Toxic World. New York: Berghahn.
10. Brant, Clare 2008 "Scenting a Subject: Odour Poetics and the Politics of Space." Ethnos 73, no. 4: 544-63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141840802563964
11. Brown, Phil 1997 "Popular Epidemiology Revisited." Current Sociology 45, no. 3: 137-56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/001139297045003008.
12. California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (COEHHA) 2001 "Formaldehyde." Summary accompanying "Prioritization of Toxic Air Contaminants Under the Children's Environmental Health Protection Act." October. http://oehha.ca.gov/air/toxic_contaminants/SB25finalreport.html.
13. California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (COEHHA) 2008 "Individual Acute, 8-Hour, and Chronic Reference Exposure Level Summaries." Appendix to "Air Toxics Hot Spots Program Technical Support Document for the Derivation of Noncancer Reference Exposure Levels." December. http://oehha.ca.gov/air/hot_spots/rels_dec2008.html.
14. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2008 "Final Report on Formaldehyde Levels in FEMA-Supplied Travel Trailers, Park Models, and Mobile Homes." July 2. http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehhe/trailerstudy/assessment.htm.
15. Chen, Mel Y. 2012 Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
16. Choy, Timothy 2012 Ecologies of Comparison: An Ethnography of Endangerment in Hong Kong. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
17. Clough, Patricia Ticineto 2009 "The New Empiricism: Affect and Sociological Method." European Journal of Social Theory 12, no. 1: 43-61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1368431008099643.
18. Csordas, Thomas J. 1993 "Somatic Modes of Attention." Cultural Anthropology 8 no. 2: 135-56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/can.1993.8.2.02a00010.
19. Dalton, Pamela, and Charles J. Wysocki 1996 "The Nature and Duration of Adaptation Following Long-Term Odor Exposure." Perception & Psychophysics 58, no. 5: 781-92. http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/BF03213109.
20. Fletcher, Christopher 2005 "Dystoposthesia: Emplacing Environmental Sensitivities." In Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader, edited by David Howes, 380-98. Oxford: Berg.
21. Fortun, Kim 2003 "Ethnography In/Of/As Open Systems." Reviews in Anthropology 32, no. 2: 171-90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00988150390197695.
22. Fortun, Kim 2012 "Ethnography in Late Industrialism." Cultural Anthropology 27, no. 3: 446-64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2012.01153.x.
23. Haraway, Donna J 1997 Modest_Witness Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouseTM: Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge.
24. Haraway, Donna J 2007 When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
25. Helmreich, Stefan 2009 "Intimate Sensing." In Simulation and Its Discontents, edited by Sherry Turkle, 129-50. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
26. Hun, Diana E., Richard L. Corsi, Maria T. Morandi, and Jeffrey A. Siegel 2010 "Formaldehyde in Residences: Long-Term Indoor Concentrations and Influencing Factors." Indoor Air 20, no. 3: 196-203. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20408902.
27. Jackson, Deborah Davis 2011 "Scents of Place: The Dysplacement of a First Nations Community in Canada." American Anthropologist 113, no. 4: 606-18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2011.01373.x.
28. Jackson, Michael 1989 Paths Toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
29. Kant, Immanuel 2000 Critique of the Power of Judgment. Edited by Paul Guyer, translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. New York: Cambridge University Press. First published in 1790.
30. Kim, Kwang Jin, Mi Jung Kil, Jeong Seob Song, Eun Ha Yoo, Ki-Cheol Son, and Stanley J. Kays 2008 "Efficiency of Volatile Formaldehyde Removal by Indoor Plants: Contribution of Aerial Plant Parts versus the Root Zone." Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science 133, no. 4: 521-26. http://journal.ashspublications.org/content/133/4/521.full.
31. Kincaid, Linda, and Bruce Offermann 2010 "Unintended Consequences: Formaldehyde Exposures in Green Homes." Synergist, February, 31-34. http://www.aihasynergist-digital.org/aihasynergist/201002?pg=31#pg31.
32. Kohn, Eduardo 2007 "How Dogs Dream: Amazonian Natures and the Politics of Transspecies Engagement." American Ethnologist 34, no. 1: 3-24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ae.2007.34.1.3.
33. Kroll-Smith, J. Stephen, and H. Hugh Floyd 1997 Bodies in Protest: Environmental Illness and the Struggle over Medical Knowledge. New York: New York University Press.
34. Latour, Bruno 2004 "How to Talk About the Body? The Normative Dimension of Science Studies." Body & Society 10, nos. 2-3: 205-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1357034×04042943.
35. Lyotard, Jean-François 1988 Le Differend: Phrases in Dispute. Translated by Georges Van Den Abbeele. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. First published in 1983.
36. Masco, Joseph 2004 "Nuclear Technoaesthetics: Sensory Politics from Trinity to the Virtual Bomb in Los Alamos." American Ethnologist 31, no. 3: 349-73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ae.2004.31.3.349.
37. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 2012 Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A. Landes. New York: Routledge. First published in 1945.
38. Morton, Timothy 2013 Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
39. Murphy, Michelle 2006 Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
40. Myers, Natasha 2008 "Molecular Embodiments and the Body-Work of Modeling in Protein Crystallography." Social Studies of Science 38, no. 2: 163-99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0306312707082969.
41. Ore, Janet 2011 "Mobile Home Syndrome: Engineered Woods and the Making of a New Domestic Ecology in the Post-World War II Era." Technology and Culture 52, no. 2: 260-86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tech.2011.0077.
42. Parr, Joy 2010 Sensing Changes: Technologies, Environments, and the Everyday, 1953-2003. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
43. Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2011 Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
44. Ray, Gene 2004 "Reading the Lisbon Earthquake: Adorno, Lyotard, and the Contemporary Sublime." Yale Journal of Criticism 17, no. 1: 1-18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/yale.2004.0007.
45. Reno, Joshua 2011 "Beyond Risk: Emplacement and the Production of Environmental Evidence." American Ethnologist 38, no. 3: 516-30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2011.01320.x.
46. Scaramelli, Caterina 2013 "Making Sense of Water Quality: Multispecies Encounters on the Mystic River." Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology 17, no. 2: 150-60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685357-01702006.
47. Shapiro, Nicholas 2014 "Un-Knowing Exposure: Toxic Emergency Housing, Strategic Inconclusivity and Governance in the US Gulf South." In Knowledge, Technology and Law, edited by Emilie Cloatre and Martyn Pickersgill, 189-205. New York: Routledge.
48. Sloterdijk, Peter 2009 Terror from the Air. Translated by Amy Patton and Steve Corcoran. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). First published in 2002.
49. Sloterdijk, Peter 2011 Bubbles: Microspherology. Translated by Wieland Hoban. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). First published in 1998.
50. Stewart, Kathleen 2005 "Cultural Poesis: The Generativity of Emergent Things." In The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, edited by Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 3rd edition, 1027-42. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage.
51. Stewart, Kathleen 2011 "Atmospheric Attunements." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29, no. 3: 445-53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/d9109.
52. Throop, C. Jason 2005 "Hypocognition, a 'Sense of the Uncanny, ' and the Anthropology of Ambiguity: Reflections on Robert I. Levy's Contribution to Theories of Experience in Anthropology." Ethos 33, no. 4: 499-511. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/eth.2005.33.4.499.
53. Waldman, Linda 2012 The Politics of Asbestos: Understandings of Risk, Disease and Protest. London: Routledge.
54. Yusoff, Kathryn 2013 "Insensible Worlds: Postrelational Ethics, Indeterminacy and the (K)nots of Relating." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 31, no. 2: 208-26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/d17411.