Citation

Grinberg D. J. War Cult. Stud. 2018; 11(1): 38-57.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/17526272.2017.1416762

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article will discuss the U.S. military's spraying of toxic defoliants over Vietnam from 1961 to 1971. It will first frame these attacks' diffuse material and cultural legacies through the concept of dispersed violence. By incorporating multiple spatiotemporal scales that encompass a range of forces, this notion seeks to recognize both the long-term consequences of war and the challenges of grasping these impacts decades later. This article will then address geographic information systems (GIS) and public participatory geographic information systems (PPGIS), and examine how these technologies can newly register the tolls of Agent Orange and other herbicides. It will consider the potentialities and limitations of these visualizations, as well as analyze some extant examples. Ultimately, it will argue that resituating the violence of Agent Orange through GIS can mark one significant step towards reconceiving the toxic residues of remote warfare.

Language: en

Keywords

Agent Orange; chemical warfare; environment; GIS; veterans; Vietnam War; violence