Flammable : Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown

In this collaborative ethnography, Javier Auyero and Débora Alejandra Swistun-who was born and raised in the dreadfully polluted shantytown in Buenos Aires from which the book takes its name-vividly describe everyday life in Flammable and depict how this ongoing, slow-motion environmental disaster is experienced and understood by its residents.

Surrounded by one of the largest petrochemical compounds in Argentina, a highly polluted river, a hazardous waste incinerator, and an unmonitored landfill, the shantytown Flammable suffers from rampant contamination of its soil, air, and water. In this book, Javier Auyero and Flammable resident Débora Alejandra Swistun draw upon archival research and two and a half years of fieldwork to explore the lived experiences of environmental suffering. Perhaps most interesting, the authors show that residents doubt or even deny the harmful impact of pollution on their lives. This denial of the obvious occurs through a "labor of confusion" generated by state officials who frequently raise the issue of relocation and just as frequently suspend it; by doctors who say the illnesses are no different from those elsewhere, but tell patients they must leave the neighborhood; and by lawyers who encourage residents to hold out for a settlement. Auyero and Swistun vividly depict this slow-motion disaster, dissecting the manifold ways in which it is experienced by Flammable residents.