In the early twentieth century, asbestos had a reputation as a lifesaver. In 1960, however, it became known that even relatively brief exposure to asbestos can cause mesothelioma, a virulent and lethal cancer. Yet the bulk of the world's asbestos was mined after 1960. Asbestos usage in many countries continued unabated. This is the first global history of how the asbestos industry and its allies in government, insurance, and medicine defended the product throughout the twentieth century. It explains how mining and manufacture could continue despite overwhelming medical evidence as to the risks. The argument advanced in this book is that asbestos has proved so enduring because the industry was able to mount a successful defense strategy for the mineral--a strategy that still operates in some parts of the world. This defence involved the shaping of the public debate by censoring, and sometimes corrupting, scientific research, nurturing scientific uncertainty, and using allies in government, insurance, and medicine. The book also discusses the problems of asbestos in the environment, compensating victims, and the continued use of asbestos in the developing world. Its global focus shows how asbestos can be seen as a model for many occupational diseases--indeed for a whole range of hazards produced by industrial societies. The book is based on a wealth of documentary material gained from legal discovery, supplemented by evidence from the authors' visits and researches in the US, the UK, Canada, Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe, Australia, Swaziland, and South Africa.

Defending the Indefensible: The Global Asbestos Industry and its Fight for Survival

Business & Money

McCulloch, Jock

Tweedale, Geoffrey

Economics

Oxford University Press

From the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s, blue asbestos was mined in South Africa for worldwide use. More recently, it has been identified as one of the most dangerous carcinogens to which humans can be exposed. Yet the asbestos mining industry and the South African government have been slow to respond to the health concerns of miners and to the environmental devastation, which has left vast areas of the Northern Cape permanently hazardous. In Asbestos Blues, Jock McCulloch explores the extent to which the South African government participated in turning company profits at the expense of poor black workers. Were mining companies, manufacturers, and government regulators covering up the risks of asbestos mining? What measures are being taken to clean up the toxic environment? What is being done to address workers’ health? Who will be held responsible? This hard-hitting book points to corporate greed as the root cause of South Africa’s human and environmental disaster.

Asbestos Blues: Labour, Capital, Physicians & the State in South Africa (African Issues)

Indiana University Press

This book deals with the panics which swept Southern Rhodesia in the period from 1902 until the mid 1930s. The supposed sexual threat posed by the proximity of black men and white women. It also resulted in the execution of innocent men for the crimes of rape and attempted rape. The panics, which were known as Black Peril, were complex events which encompass such topics as the management of venereal disease, the politics of concubinage, and the construction of whiteness.

Black Peril, White Virtue: Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902-1935

History

Africa

Asbestos Blues: Labour, Capital, Physicians and the State in South Africa (African Issues)

From the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s, blue asbestos was mined in South Africa for worldwide use. More recently, it has been identified as one of the most dangerous carcinogens to which humans can be exposed. Yet the asbestos mining industry and the South African government have been slow to respond to the health concerns of miners and to the environmental devastation, which has left vast areas of the Northern Cape permanently hazardous. In Asbestos Blues, Jock McCulloch explores the extent to which the South African government participated in turning company profits at the expense of poor black workers. Were mining companies, manufacturers, and government regulators covering up the risks of asbestos mining? What measures are being taken to clean up the toxic environment? What is being done to address workers’ health? Who will be held responsible? This hard-hitting book points to corporate greed as the root cause of South Africa’s human and environmental disaster.

In this first history of the practice and theoretical underpinnings of colonial psychiatry in Africa, Jock McCulloch describes the clinical approaches of well-known European psychiatrists who worked directly with indigenous Africans, among them Frantz Fanon, J.C. Carothers, and Wulf Sachs. They were a disparate group, operating independently of one another, and mostly in intellectual isolation. But despite their differences, they shared a coherent set of ideas about "The African Mind," premised on the colonial notion of African inferiority. In exploring the close association between the ideologies of settler societies and psychiatric research, this intriguing study is one of the few attempts to explore colonial science as a system of knowledge and power.

Colonial Psychiatry and the African Mind

Cambridge University Press

Black Soul, White Artifact: Fanon's Clinical Psychology and Social Theory

The death of Frantz Fanon at the age of thirty-six robbed the African revolution of its leading intellectual and moral force. His death also cut short one of the most extraordinary intellectual careers in contemporary political thought. Fanon was a political psychologist whose approach to revolutionary theory was grounded in his psychiatric practice. During his years in Algeria he published clinical studies on the behaviour of violent patients, the role of culture in the development of illness and the function of the psychiatric hospital as a social milieu. These papers illuminate Fanon's political theory, expose weaknesses in his concept of political consciousness and liberation, and contain a 'secret history' explaining the tide of revolutionary movements in the Third World.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

The death of Frantz Fanon at the age of thirty-six robbed the African revolution of its leading intellectual and moral force. His death also cut short one of the most extraordinary intellectual careers in contemporary political thought. Fanon was a political psychologist whose approach to revolutionary theory was grounded in his psychiatric practice. During his years in Algeria he published clinical studies on the behaviour of violent patients, the role of culture in the development of illness and the function of the psychiatric hospital as a social milieu. These papers illuminate Fanon's political theory, expose weaknesses in his concept of political consciousness and liberation, and contain a 'secret history' explaining the tide of revolutionary movements in the Third World.

Asbestos: Its Human Cost

University of Queensland Pr (Australia)

The politics of Agent Orange: The Australian experience

Politics & Government

Heinemann

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McCulloch, Jock. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by McCulloch, Jock

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McCulloch, Jock. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Defending the Indefensible: The Global Asbestos Industry and its Fight for Survival

Asbestos Blues: Labour, Capital, Physicians & the State in South Africa (African Issues)

Black Peril, White Virtue: Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902-1935

Asbestos Blues: Labour, Capital, Physicians and the State in South Africa (African Issues)

Colonial Psychiatry and the African Mind

Black Soul, White Artifact: Fanon's Clinical Psychology and Social Theory

Colonial Psychiatry and the African Mind

Black Soul, White Artifact: Fanon's Clinical Psychology and Social Theory

Asbestos: Its Human Cost

The politics of Agent Orange: The Australian experience