Money in the Anthropocene: An STS Perspective from Taiwan

The literature on environmental issues seldom addresses problems of money, but when it does, it tends to neglect its moral ambiguity and polysemy. The problem of money is a key issue if we are to find a solution for the man-made disaster of geological scale called the Anthropocene. Drawing on STS works on biocapitalism and the economization of life (Sunder Rajan 2006, Murphy 2017), the moral economy of cancer (Lora Wrainwright 2013, 2017) and the sociology of money (e.g. Zelizer), my research on two cases of industrial damage in Taiwan attempts to unravel problems of money in the areas of industrial damage, public health and the environment. I highlight how, for the victims, symbolic, moral and economic expectations are entangled, forging a web of motivations. Contrasting with the dominant views, I show that money does not always negatively affect mobilization. All depends on how the money is framed.