Plastic Cultures

This chapter examines how plastics came to increased prominence in cultural debates, practices and spaces during the second decade of the 21st century. The chapter argues that this concern weaves together academic research from the environmental sciences, social sciences and humanities, with political and media discourses about the ‘plastic problem’. Drawing on the author's own research on plastics, the chapter has two aims. Firstly, to outline emerging cultural-geographical scholarship that has directly grappled with plastic. Secondly, to connect a larger body of work – both within (environmental) geography and the social sciences and humanities – with some of the key concerns of cultural geographers, including identity, consumption and visual cultures. The chapter progresses through three broad thematic areas: practices and knowledges; identities, inequalities and consumption; and cultural-environmental geographies.