The Site of Lead: Social Poisoning in El Salvador

Authors

  • Hugo De Burgos University of British Columbia

Keywords:

El Salvador, lead contamination, social poisoning, corporate irresponsibility, social suffering, medical bad faith

Abstract

This article explores lead contamination, or plumbism, as both an illness and a symptom of social suffering caused by unscrupulous corporations operating with the complicity of corrupt governments and backed up by medical bad faith in El Salvador. I explore how the biomedical model of disease (as a quantifiable phenomenon) is used politically to contest and delegitimize victims of plumbism, privileging economic progress over human welfare. I examine the tensions between official narratives and people's narratives of illness and their relationship to an ideology of industrial development and economic prosperity in El Salvador.

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Published

2015-04-30

How to Cite

De Burgos, H. (2015). The Site of Lead: Social Poisoning in El Salvador. Anthropologica, 57(1), 185–198. Retrieved from https://cas-sca.journals.uvic.ca/index.php/anthropologica/article/view/515

Issue

Vol. 57 No. 1 (2015): Kinship Travel: Relatedness through International Tourism and Travel Networks

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2015 Hugo De Burgos

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