Toxic Debt
An Environmental Justice History of Detroit
By Josiah Rector
344 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 15 halftones, 2 tables
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Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-6576-4
Published: April 2022 -
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-6575-7
Published: April 2022 -
E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-1-4696-6577-1
Published: February 2022 -
E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-5940-2
Published: February 2022
Justice, Power, and Politics
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- Paperback $39.95
- Hardcover $95.00
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Awards & distinctions
A 2023 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Toxic Debt is not only a book about racism, capitalism, and the making of these environmental disasters. It is also a history of Detroit's environmental justice movement, which emerged from over a century of battles over public health in the city and involved radical auto workers, ecofeminists, and working-class women fighting for clean water. Linking the histories of urban political economy, the environment, and social movements, Toxic Debt lucidly narrates the story of debt, environmental disaster, and resistance in Detroit.
About the Author
Josiah Rector is assistant professor of history at the University of Houston.
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Reviews
"[Josiah Rector] has written a book that advances two major interventions. First, it pushes back the environmental justice movement’s genesis to midcentury union organizing. Second, and just as significantly, it firmly connects the effects of debt and austerity—that is to say, capitalism—to environmental racism...Toxic Debt is an outstanding book...relentlessly clear-eyed in its focus on contemporary injustice and resistance."—Scott W. Stern, The New York Review of Books
"A groundbreaking study that opens up new questions and perspectives in urban and environmental history, while simultaneously showing a real understanding of the stakes for present and future residents of Detroit . . . . a major achievement . . . . a new model for understanding and explaining our current environmental challenges, as well as their causes and consequences."—Journal of American History
“An outstanding book examining multiple issues of environmental justice in Detroit. . . . Alongside the issues, Rector highlights the story of the many people involved in environmental justice activism, critically examining successes and failures in their efforts to bring about change. . . . Highly recommended.”—CHOICE
"A must-read for anyone doing work on the environment, sociology, public health, policy, or labor in Detroit and beyond . . . . accessible and important for wide-reaching audiences, including activists, policymakers, practitioners, and scholars."—Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
“Josiah Rector’s history of environmental justice in Detroit is breathtaking in its ambition and scope. Integrating environmental justice, urban history, and political economy, Rector lays out how environmental inequality came to be, as a confluence of white segregationists working with capitalists in industry, finance, and real estate at the expense of workers and communities. This dazzling debut is extensively researched, innovative, and a must-read for those interested in environmental justice, labor history, and contemporary problems that continue to land particularly hard on Black, Brown, and poor bodies and communities in Detroit and beyond.”—Julie Sze, author of Sustainability: Approaches to Environmental Justice and Social Power
“Toxic Debt is a vital record of a decades-long war against descendants of enslaved Africans who have fought to make the city of Detroit their home. Josiah Rector documents with disturbing clarity how those who fled to Detroit to escape southern racism became the targets of labor exploitation, environmental abuse, mass water shutoffs, and attacks on their democratic rights. Black Detroit has been marked for expulsion from the city because it is a community that has never been part of the corporate vision of a new kind of Detroit. What most distinguishes the book is its account of Black Detroit’s unrelenting, determined, and principled resistance.”—Mark P. Fancher, ACLU of Michigan Racial Justice Project Attorney