Toxic Matters: Law, Science & Risk in an Ecuadorian Lawsuit Against the Chevron Corporation

Speaker: Suzana Sawyer, University of California - Davis. Sawyer, is a cultural and environmental anthropologist engaged with issues of oil politics and human rights in the Amazonian region of Ecuador. She follows the social life of oil through the indigenous communities that suffer the exploitation of their land's resources, to the Ecuadorian state, to the multinational oil companies in the U.S. courts where the toxic effects of oil drilling and natural gas extraction by Texaco9 and Chevron have been litigated. Her book, Crude Chronicles (Duke, 2004) situates the cultural environment of the upper Amazon in this broad institutional nexus, rethinking anthropological categories (local, global, citizen, state) as she goes.

Location: Aaron Burr Hall, Room 219

Date/Time: 03/25/10 at 4:30 pm - 03/25/10 at 6:00 pm

Category: Sponsored & Affiliated Events

Department: Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI)