Here's an introductory page. When you're done checking it out, you can continue going to the first stop by clicking on the right hand side. You will then land on the entry page of Toxic Tour Stop 1.
Every tour stop includes an entry page, and a content page. You can do the tour by simply following the red arrows. Besides, there are navigation panels on all pages that will lead you back to the entry, back to the start with the overview map, to all stop entries directly and, not to forget, our references on the lower right of the content page!
“Somehow everything seems very peaceful, almost idyllic with the beautiful nature and the green heaps around it. Even the cooling towers from the coal power plant next to the chemical site were green. We heard cuckoos and saw red kites (both rather rare) - a strong contrast to the huge industrial plants here in Schkopau” (fieldnotes, May 2021).
These notes from our field trip to the former chemical site of the Buna Werke Schkopau (further referred to as Buna Werke), today part of an industrial site owned by the Dow Olefinverbund Schkopau GmbH¹ (further referred to as Dow), read as if we had taken a trip to a nature reserve rather than an industrial site in the Middle German Chemical Triangle² to do research about toxicity. These first impressions contradicted our initital knowledge about the toxic legacies of the GDR at former industrial sites of the Middle German Chemical Triangle. As anthropologists it is our passion to investigate friction points and therefore we asked ourselves:
How much of its (toxic) past is still lingering in the present landscape of the new? And how is this legacy addressed in the present?
We engaged with these questions during our MA-seminar “Toxicity: Ethnographies in Late Industrialism”, led by Prof.in Dr.in Asta Vonderau at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (Germany). Our research is based on ethnographic materials derived from a total of eight qualitative interviews with former interns who worked at the Buna Werke in Schkopau in the 1970s; with residents of the cities of Schkopau and Korbetha; as well as with a hydrogeologist and a historian of the Buna Werke. Moreover, we undertook four visits to the industrial sites. We drove around the plant to get an impression of its location, structure and appearance, we visited the nearby cities Korbetha and Schkopau to understand where and how neighbours of the plant are living. Furthermore we exchanged emails with institutions of the federal state Saxony-Anhalt about the measurement of current toxicity, ongoing remediation efforts and state supervision of the Dow company. Finally, we did extensive literature research on the history of the industrial site, the working and living conditions there during the GDR, issues of environmental pollution and remaining traces of toxicity, as well as on representations and perceptions of the chemical production in local newsletters and websites of Dow Olefinverbund GmbH, today's owner of the chemical site.
The outcome of our work is a combination of primary data-driven analysis and ethnographic descriptions. In collaboration with Tim Schütz and his course on “Archiving for the Anthropocene” at Goethe University Frankfurt/Main we developed this virtual “Toxic Tour”. The concept of our “Toxic Tour” was inspired by the virtual tour on Louisiana’s “cancer alley”, published on the Disaster STS platform by Kim Fortun et al. (2020).
Our tour serves as a collage of research results. Analysis is based solely on our research which in turn was limited to the resources made available to us by the seminar framework, with fieldwork being restricted due to the pandemic situation. We are well aware that further research will be necessary in order to fully grasp the scope of toxic legacies in the region. Our Toxic Tour thus is not so much meant as a contribution to theoretical debates in the Anthropology of the Anthropocene; it is a data collection that may be useful for comparison, or as a starting point for more theoretical endeavours.
Our research strategy may be described as “multi-sited ethnography“ (Clifford and Marcus 1986). The Toxic Tour's experimental collage does not aim to provide a holistic representation of this research; rather, it looks at Buna Werke's sites in relation to larger contexts of historic processes, economic transformations, and chemical relations. We first approach our questions about the Schkopau site through a consideration of the history and therefore the toxic past of the chemical site (Stop 1), followed by an analysis of interviews with former interns and employees, still living in the region (Stop 2). These conversations connect the history with today’s perception of this industrial site, allowing us to link the oast to current hard facts regarding potential remaining toxicity in the area with a focus on (ground)water (Stops 3, 4 and 5). In a subsequent part, we take a look at ongoing negotiations on questions of toxicity, by showing how Dow company - the current owner of the chemical site - represents the chemical site, and how this site is perceived by people living nearby (Stop 6). Our last tour stop then raises questions about responsibility, based on the social and environmental implications of toxicity from the former Buna Werke Schkopau (Stop 7).
Although not primarily a work of theory, our research is influenced by several theories we encountered in context of our seminar. These theories helped us to develop questions as we explored the area and conducted our research.
Michelle Murphy’s “chemical regimes of living“ inspired us to look at the complex relationships in which chemicals travel and flows of molecules are taking certain paths. Murphy notes that chemical are often portrayed as “disconnected functionalist molecules“ (2017: 496) and states that “In the 21st century, humans are chemically transformed beings“ (2008: 696). Following her critique of such one-sided perceptions, we are examining the notion of chemicals and their involvement in the atmosphere, water, soil or bodies forming part in potential toxic molecular relations (2008: 697). From this perspective, chemical relations and their entanglement into social and human lives are our main point of interest. With our tour we aim to follow these traces of toxicity by pointing to power asymmetries, representations, or past and present perceptions, that are all somehow related to the chemicals produced in Buna Werke at Schkopau.
We also pondered on Rob Nixon’s notion of “slow violence”, which he describes as an “environmentally embedded violence“ (2011: 7) across the world. A violence shaped by formless threats, e.g. through toxic waste whose fatal repercussions are cumulatively dispersed across time and space (ibid.: 11). Does this notion apply to the consequences of toxic production at former Buna Werke Schkopau? Our reading of Nixon pointed us to the significance of infrastructures in Schkopau, as part of a longer history of power inequalities. We wondered if the entanglement of chemicals and their exposure shape the potential of future life, as noted by Murphy when she speaks of an “afterlife“ (2017: 497).
¹ Dow Olefinverbund GmbH is a subsidiary of the US chemical corporation DuPont de Nemours (until June 2019: DowDuPont).
² This term mainly includes the former GDR chemical industry locations Buna, Leuna and Bitterfeld. Depending on the definition also the area of Dessau, Halle, Merseburg and Leipzig can be meant.
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