Thematic Issue

Legacies of Bhopal: 40 years on – Call for Papers

 

Qualitative Research in Medicine and Healthcare invites original manuscripts, reviews, case reports, and pedagogical activities focused on the legacy of the Bhopal Gas Disaster, known as ‘the world’s worst industrial disaster’. 

 

December 3, 2024, will mark 40 years since 40 metric tons of the deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India. In these past 40 years, the still-unfolding disaster has shaped environmental/occupational health and justice worldwide. For instance, responding directly to the disaster, the U.S. Congress enacted the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) and the Toxics Release Inventory. Moreover, the disaster continues to serve as a point of reference for toxics-impacted communities globally.

 

The events of December 3rd are the most well-known aspect of this disaster. Less studied is the “slow violence” wreaked by the lack of clean-up, groundwater contamination, and chronic and intergenerational health impacts. Despite a longstanding dismissal of survivors' legal and medical claims, survivor-led and on-the-ground support groups creatively address the needs of the impacted communities. Workers' alliances and community-led social movement groups sustain a transnational movement for justice, engage in citizen science, have developed holistic approaches to relieving survivors’ chemical body burdens, and attend to the broader environmental health crisis.  

Frontline communities are typically subject to “toxic gaslighting” that constructs their lived experiences as inaccurate, exaggerated, or suspicious “voices of the side effects”. Qualitative studies of environmental health disasters help mitigate the harms done by technical models of risk communication, which dismiss community-based, sensory, embodied, intuitive, and experiential knowledges.

The co-editors for this special issue invite papers that focus on the Bhopal Gas Disaster and its legacies and impacts worldwide. Papers need not directly focus on the Bhopal gas disaster but must refer to and center its legacy. Heeding Dr. Eve Tuck’s crucial call to cease “damage-centered research,” we invite papers that resist the tendency to portray Bhopal’s survivors and frontline communities solely in terms of victimhood, pain, and strife. Papers can include research studies, first-person accounts, book reviews, and relevant pedagogical activities.

 

Types of Submissions

Original Articles (8500 words max, abstract 180 words max, 35 references max, 3/5 tables and/or figures): In general, this kind of publication should be divided into an Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, and References, but feel free to give these sections a thematic title. A maximum of 10 authors is permitted and additional authors should be listed in an ad hoc Appendix.

Reviews (4000 words max, abstract 250 words max, minimum 40 references, 3/5 tables and/or figures): They should be introduced by a general summary of content in the form of an Abstract. Following a short introduction, putting the study into context and defining the aim, reviews will concentrate on the most recent developments in the field. A review should clearly describe the search strategy followed (key words, inclusion, exclusion criteria, search engines, etc.). No particular format is required; headings should be used to designate the major divisions of the paper.

Case Reports (about 2000 words, abstract 150 words max, 20 references max, 3 tables and/or figures): Reports describing observations on clinical cases that can be educational, including adverse effects of drugs or outcomes of a specific treatment. They should be divided into: Abstract, Introduction (optional), Case report(s), Discussion, Conclusions and References.

Pedagogical Activities (2000 words max, abstract 150 words max, 20 references max, 3 tables and/or figures): This submission type includes assignments or other activities used to educate students, practitioners, or community members. Activities should include information about learning objectives, materials needed (if applicable), a description of the assignment/activity, and assessment/debrief.

 

The type of submission should be included in the title page.

 

Click here for more information about manuscript preparation.

Deadline for abstracts: 15 April 2024

Abstract may be submitted via email at  qrmh.bhopal@gmail.com  

Deadline for submission: 15 August 2024

Full paper submissions should be presented through the website.

 

About the Guest-Editors

 

Renu Pariyadath, PhD is Associate Professor of Communication at the University of South Carolina Upstate. Her research examines communication processes in social and organizational change, development in the Global South, and environmental health, justice, and sustainability, using ethnographic fieldwork, qualitative interviewing, focus groups, and participant observation. She is also investigating neurodiversity in Higher Education in her role as Faculty Fellow for Neurodiversity. Renu is a former Coordinating Committee of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, North America. 
E-mail: renup@uscupstate.edu

 

Reena Shadaan, PhD is the Mustard postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Work and Health (Toronto, Canada). She has a PhD in environmental studies at York University and an MA in gender studies and feminist research at McMaster University. Her research intersects environmental, reproductive, and occupational health and justice. Shadaan is a former Coordinating Committee member of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, North America and has written on Bhopali women’s activism, their access to healthcare, and the Bhopal solidarity movement. 
E-mail: rshadaan@iwh.on.ca

Please send questions with the subject Legacies of Bhopal: 40 years on – QRMH to: renup@uscupstate.edu

Abstract may be submitted via email at  qrmh.bhopal@gmail.com  by April 15th.