Seminar with visiting professor Charlotte Kroløkke
Research seminar on "Hormone Havoc. Endocrine-disruption and reproduction in The Danish Commonwealth."
Recent studies have revealed that Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), The Faroes, and Denmark have the highest levels of Per- and Polyfluorinated Substances (PFAS)-pollution in the world (Christensen, 2023). However, the ways in which these “forever chemicals” come to matter, across the three geographical contexts, connected by a colonial past and present, vary significantly.
This presentation begins by situating the interest in hormones considering contemporary feminist theories. It then uses feminist cultural science and environmental reproductive justice studies perspectives to explore how colonial relations become entangled with chemical pollution and endocrine disruption in recent scandals concerning PFAS. Of particular interest is responding to the question: Whose reproduction appears to be under threat from PFAS-pollution? And how does the health of Danish Commonwealth babies come to matter differently? Based on an archive of scientific, parliamentary, and popular scientific debates in Kalaallit Nunaat, The Faroes, and Denmark, the presentation discusses how endocrine disruption and (reproductive) toxicity become, in the case of Kalaallit Nunaat and The Faroes, animated through iconic nonhuman animals (such as polar bears and whales) and Inuit hunters, while it, in the case of Denmark, emerges as an alarm related to the pollution of white maternal bodies, images of vulnerable white children, and a fear concerning the feminization of men.