Chemical Geographies 1

In the first of my reports on chemical geographies, I focus on a growing body of work that engages with chemicals, chemistry, and the chemical industry as vital and strategic actors across politics, environments, and economies. Chemical geographies is a loose body of literature that moves beyond the impact of chemicals from a singularly environmental or toxicological perspective to explore how chemistry and chemicals lie at heart of what it means to be human today. In many ways, chemical geographies are a partial return to geographic and allied research done many decades prior that centered chemical production as an object of geographic study. However, what the literature also shows is that chemical geographies have pushed deeper into interdisciplinary scholarship and justice seeking realms. In doing so, it has expanded what is means to think geographically with and through chemicals and chemistry.