Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in Global Electronics

New from Temple University Press:

Challenging the Chip:
Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry
Edited by Ted Smith, David A. Sonnenfeld, and David Naguib Pellow

Publication Date: August 24, 2006
368 pp., 37 b&w illustrations, 22 tables, 3 maps, 6 figures, 6x9"
paper ISBN 1-59213-330-4 $25.95

A revealing look at the dark side of the technology industry

Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry (Publication Date: August 24, 2006) is the first comprehensive examination of the impacts of electronics manufacturing on workers and local environments across the planet.

From Silicon Valley in California to Silicon Glen in Scotland, from Silicon Island in Taiwan to Silicon Paddy in China, the social, economic, and ecological effects of the international electronics industry are widespread. The production of electronic and computer components contaminates air, land, and water around the globe. As this eye-opening book reveals, the people who suffer the consequences are largely poor, female, immigrant, and minority.

Contributors to this pioneering volume include many of the world's most articulate, passionate, and progressive visionaries, scholars, and advocates. Here they not only document the unsustainable and often devastating practices of the global electronics industry but also chronicle creative ways in which activists, government agencies, and others have attempted to reform the industry—through resistance, persuasion, and regulation.

Ted Smith is founder and Senior Strategist, Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, and is co-founder and Coordinator of the International Campaign for Responsible Technology. A Q&A with Ted Smith is available in which he answers questions about the state of the global electronics industry.

David A. Sonnenfeld is Associate Professor in the Department of Community and Rural Sociology at Washington State University. He is co-editor of Ecological Modernisation Around the World: Perspectives and Critical Debates.

David Naguib Pellow is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago.

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