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The introduction sets out the scope of the book: to explore how urban inequalities and the socio-spatial fragmentation of Caribbean cities both reflect and reinforce divergent discourses and practices pertaining to the environment—glossed here as Uptown and Downtown environmentalism. In so doing, the book connects environmental anthropology and urban studies, disrupting urban–nature dichotomies. The introduction argues that political economy approaches to environmental injustice must be supplemented by attention to the cultural politics that naturalize the unequal distribution of pollution. In addition, it suggests that “provincializing” urban political ecology by focusing on cities from the global South enables a better understanding of how multiple histories of European imperialism have informed the racialization of urban ecologies. The chapter introduces the concept of “urban naturalisms”: the equation of specific (classed and raced) urban populations with specific traits and types of spaces.

The Coda summarizes the implications of the study for studies of environmental justice. It argues that combating ecological vulnerability does not require excluding or exacerbating social vulnerabilities and suggests promising developments currently taking place in the Caribbean in this regard. This conclusion also suggests that environmental anthropology needs to include the study of urban areas, as persistent city–nature dichotomies have informed the (non-urban) priorities and field sites of researchers. In addition, urban anthropology must pay more attention to the importance of the social production of nature and the environment to city life, and the role of environmental issues in structuring urban inequalities. Both fields can benefit from a focus on the lasting effects of colonialism, tracing the roots of patterns of socio-ecological thought and practice in natural and urban landscapes.

This book has argued that the “environment” in Japan remains intensely Japanese even as it offers numerous facets that shed light on other parts of the world. It has explored what environment in Japan really means by focusing on the strata of Japanese society, revealing Japanese attitudes toward waste and pollution. It has presented evidence showing that urban Japanese attend to, and are in many ways deeply concerned with, their surroundings and participate in elaborate discourses on “nature.” It has also considered how threats to reproduction, conceptions of hygiene, notions of health and illness, shifting boundaries of place and the home, exclusionary mappings of the community, and evocations of nature together influence the social climate of Japan in general and Tokyo in particular. The book concludes by discussing the role that environmental anthropology can play in elucidating the rather underexplored contextual nature of environmental engagement.

The first chapter introduces the Superfund process, and describes how concepts and theories around environmental justice and political ecology need to be framed with an understanding of settler colonialism to be applied to Native American communities. This introduction also describes the community based methods from which this project was born, and lays out the three bodies (individual, social and political) through which Akwesasro:non responses to topics throughout the book are framed

Drawing from interviews, archival materials, public meeting minutes, and newspaper clippings, the second chapter documents the history of the discovery of, and efforts to remediate environmental contamination, as well as the work that went into establishing community based environmental health research at Akwesasne

Rooted in interview material with scientists, field workers and study participants, as well as the literatures of citizen science, CBPR, and study report-back, the third chapter discusses the benefits and challenges for both scientists and community members of this large-scale CBPR project.

The fifth chapter explores the ways in which Akwesasne community members conceptualize the environmental, social, and physiological origins of diabetes, placing the blame not just on individual non-compliant bodies, but rather weaving a more complex etiology that indicates connections between PCBs and diabetes

The book’s conclusion highlights how Akwesasro:non suggestions for ways to improve environmental health research and health care can be framed through a model of three bodies: the individual, social, and political bodies. This final chapter also explores how Mohawks have created a third space of sovereignty that addresses their health, cultural and research needs in the face of environmental contamination, through grassroots and tribal programs

Prior to the discovery of contamination in the river, Akwesasne relied on fishing and farming to sustain food needs and the local economy. The fourth chapter focuses on changes in food culture in Akwesasne and the direct and collateral ways that people connect this, and the ensuing health complications, to the environmental contamination and other factors

Chapter 1 lays out the history of this community in the context of a driving tour, using landmarks along the main thoroughfare to discuss relevant points in Akwesasne’s history to illustrate the historico-political setting for community responses to the environmental contamination