Polluted Politics

This book describes the politically charged afterlife of Israeli electronics gathered by and processed in a cluster of rural Palestinian villages that has emerged as an informal regional e-waste hub. As with many such hubs throughout the global South, rudimentary recycling practices represent a remarkable entrepreneurial means of livelihood amidst poverty and constraint, that generates staggering damage to local health and the environment, with tensions between these reaching a breaking point. John-Michael Davis and Yaakov Garb draw on a decade of community-based action research with and within these villages to contextualise the emergence, realities and future options of the Palestinian hub within both the geo-political realities of Israel's occupation of the West Bank as well as shifting understandings of e-waste and recycling dynamics and policies globally. Their stories and analysis are a poignant window into this troubled region and a key sustainability challenge in polarized globalized world.

• Offers a detailed study of the informal Palestinian-Israeli e-waste system that is illuminated by, and serves to illuminate, the regional geopolitical context as well as the dynamics and dilemmas of e-waste hubs and policies in similar hubs globally
• Reframes widely accepted e-waste discourses and policies to center informal e-waste hubs as key necessary actors in the reform of e-waste value chains
• Provides methodological insights into action-oriented research closely coupled with community needs and development, allowing the systematic study of informal economies, and the challenges and complexities of sustained community-based change