Paper short abstract:

Analysis of the multi-scalar (global to micro-geographic) patchiness of releases, flows, and responses to e-waste contaminants. Based on the Palestinian hub that processed the majority of Israel's e-waste for over a decade

Paper long abstract:

The problem of e-waste and the toxicity of e-waste burning has gained broad recognition. But, while imagined as a global problem, oriented along an axis of the Global/South, it occurs overwhelmingly in a few hubs. Our paper draws on our extensive immersive experience within one such hub, a cluster of Palestinian villages that processed most of Israel's e-waste for over a decade. We offer a social and geographic analysis of the remarkable patchiness in the presence and flows of heavy metals released by e-waste processing activities: in where such hubs occur at global and national scales; of where the most hazardous activity of burning of cables for copper extraction occurs in and around these hubs; and in how toxics are dispersed from these burn sites over four orders of magnitude, from kilometers to meters. We also describe the patchiness in the location and purview of the scientific knowledge, legal frameworks, and policies that grapple with the e-waste problem, but falter because of the social cleavages that underlie its radically multi-scalar complexity. Finally, we describe discontinuities and flows in the awareness of toxic hazard in different spaces: our research team's and lay community members' continual grappling with tension between growing awareness of the undeniable extent and consequence of toxics versus daily normalization of this ubiquitous, diffuse and invisible threat; and the schizophrenia of field versus laboratory, where the same matter transforms from common soil to exotic hazardous waste.