MacKendrick Better Safe Than Sorry

How Consumers Navigate Exposure to Everyday Toxics
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-0-520-96907-0
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 272 Seiten

How toxic are the products we consume on a daily basis? Whether it’s triclosan in toothpaste, formaldehyde in baby shampoo, endocrine disruptors in water bottles, or pesticides on strawberries, chemicals in food and personal care products are of increasing concern to consumers. This book chronicles how ordinary people try to avoid exposure to toxics in grocery store aisles using the practice of “precautionary consumption.”
 
Through an innovative analysis of environmental regulation, the advocacy work of environmental health groups, the expansion of the health-food chain Whole Foods Market, and interviews with consumers, Norah MacKendrick ponders why the problem of toxics in the U.S. retail landscape has been left to individual shoppers—and to mothers in particular. She reveals how precautionary consumption, or “green shopping,” is a costly and time-intensive practice, one that is connected to cultural ideas of femininity and good motherhood but is also most available to upper- and middle-class households. Better Safe Than Sorry powerfully argues that precautionary consumption places a heavy and unfair burden of labor on women and does little to advance environmental justice or mitigate risk.

Autoren/Hrsg.

MacKendrick, Norah

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
List of Abbreviations xv

1 • Introduction 1
2 • Safe until Sorry: Chemical Regulation in the United States 26
3 • Personalizing Pollution: The Environmental Health Movement 56
4 • Be a Super Shopper! Precautionary Consumption at the Grocery Store 83
5 • The High Stakes of Shopping: Precautionary Consumption as Mothers’ Work 103
6 • Precautionary Consumption as a Class Act 125
7 • Moving toward Environmental Justice 143
Methodological Appendix 159

Notes 179
Reference List 205
Index 233

Über Autor(innen)

MacKendrickNorah:
Norah MacKendrick is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University.