This book explores technology and the global tech industry in relation to social, health, economic, and environmental relations and politics. Peter Little argues that the power and influence of electronics and Big Tech—from the proliferation of digital platforms to the expansion of global electronic waste streams—is a political-ecological problem that impacts communities and lives in both the Global North and South. From intense resource extraction, industrial pollution, and surging health and economic inequalities, to data-driven surveillance, platform economy proliferation and intrusion, and Silicon Valley corporate-power, Little argues that the political ecology of tech matters now more than ever. Based on a mixture of engagements with tech criticism, ethnographic case studies, and critical analysis and development of guiding concepts—ranging from technocapital to technoprecarious political ecology—the book exposes and interrogates the underlying toxicity, precarity, and planetary politics of the global tech. Critical Zones of Technopower and Global Political Ecology also tracks justice struggles that confront technopower, including “just tech” forms of social action that further reinforce the importance of a global political ecology of technocapitalism in the digital age.

Global trade in electronic waste (e-waste) has led to various waste management challenges and many regions of the Global South have suffered the toxic consequences. In Burning Matters, Peter C. Little explores the complex cultural, economic, and environmental health politics of e-waste work in Ghana. He brings to light the lived experiences of Ghana's e-waste workers, as they navigate the health, social, and economic challenges of highly toxic e-waste labor. In particular, Little engages the experiences of e-waste workers who burn bundles of electrical cables to extract copper, a practice that contaminates bodies and the urban environment and which has attracted international organizations seeking to mitigate risk and find quick tech solutions to this highly toxic e-waste work. A nuanced perspective on e-waste burning and environmental politics in Africa at a time when global e-waste generation and trade is at an all-time high, Burning Matters contends that e-waste interventions devoid of ethnographic perspective and knowledge risk downplaying the vibrant complexities of e-waste itself and the matters of social life and labor that matter most to Ghana's e-waste workers.

Shows the risks of high-tech pollution through a study of an IBM plant's effects on a New York town In 1924, IBM built its first plant in Endicott, New York. Now, Endicott is a contested toxic waste site. With its landscape thoroughly contaminated by carcinogens, Endicott is the subject of one of the nation's largest corporate-state mitigation efforts. Yet despite the efforts of IBM and the U.S. government, Endicott residents remain skeptical that the mitigation systems employed were designed with their best interests at heart. In Toxic Town, Peter C. Little tracks and critically diagnoses the experiences of Endicott residents as they learn to live with high-tech pollution, community transformation, scientific expertise, corporate-state power, and risk mitigation technologies. By weaving together the insights of anthropology, political ecology, disaster studies, and science and technology studies, the book explores questions of theoretical and practical import for understanding the politics of risk and the ironies of technological disaster response in a time when IBM's stated mission is to build a "Smarter Planet." Little critically reflects on IBM's new corporate tagline, arguing for a political ecology of corporate social and environmental responsibility and accountability that places the social and environmental politics of risk mitigation front and center. Ultimately, Little argues that we will need much more than hollow corporate taglines, claims of corporate responsibility, and attempts to mitigate high-tech disasters to truly build a smarter planet.

Global trade in electronic waste (e-waste) has led to various waste management challenges and many regions of the Global South have suffered the toxic consequences. In Burning Matters, Peter C. Little explores the complex cultural, economic, and environmental health politics of e-waste work in Ghana. He brings to light the lived experiences of Ghana's e-waste workers, as they navigate the health, social, and economic challenges of highly toxic e-waste labor. In particular, Little engages the experiences of e-waste workers who burn bundles of electrical cables to extract copper, a practice that contaminates bodies and the urban environment and which has attracted international organizations seeking to mitigate risk and find quick tech solutions to this highly toxic e-waste work. A nuanced perspective on e-waste burning and environmental politics in Africa at a time when global e-waste generation and trade is at an all-time high, Burning Matters contends that e-waste interventions devoid of ethnographic perspective and knowledge risk downplaying the vibrant complexities of e-waste itself and the matters of social life and labor that matter most to Ghana's e-waste workers.

Shows the risks of high-tech pollution through a study of an IBM plant's effects on a New York town In 1924, IBM built its first plant in Endicott, New York. Now, Endicott is a contested toxic waste site. With its landscape thoroughly contaminated by carcinogens, Endicott is the subject of one of the nation's largest corporate-state mitigation efforts. Yet despite the efforts of IBM and the U.S. government, Endicott residents remain skeptical that the mitigation systems employed were designed with their best interests at heart. In Toxic Town, Peter C. Little tracks and critically diagnoses the experiences of Endicott residents as they learn to live with high-tech pollution, community transformation, scientific expertise, corporate-state power, and risk mitigation technologies. By weaving together the insights of anthropology, political ecology, disaster studies, and science and technology studies, the book explores questions of theoretical and practical import for understanding the politics of risk and the ironies of technological disaster response in a time when IBM's stated mission is to build a "Smarter Planet." Little critically reflects on IBM's new corporate tagline, arguing for a political ecology of corporate social and environmental responsibility and accountability that places the social and environmental politics of risk mitigation front and center. Ultimately, Little argues that we will need much more than hollow corporate taglines, claims of corporate responsibility, and attempts to mitigate high-tech disasters to truly build a smarter planet.