2026 Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture

Living with Toxic Development: Ship Recycling in Coastal Bangladesh

Camelia Dewan

Uppsala University

The 2026 Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture examines the lived concerns of residents and workers in the industrialising zone of Sitakunda in southeast coastal Bangladesh who are subject to toxic exposures both at work and at home. I argue that worries about health and pollution highlight the unevenness of the “promises of development to come” (Li 2017)—a powerful discourse of growth and prosperity in which many are asked to make significant sacrifices in the name of progress. In Sitakunda, industrial development generates economic growth for those able to mobilise capital and land—wealthy businessmen and landowners who can sell property, open shops, or relocate. Others, including fishing communities and landless workers, cannot afford such mobility. My interlocutors describe unnayan (economic development, modernization) as bishakto (poisonous, toxic). Building on these emic terms, I propose the concept of toxic development to draw attention to how ordinary people without capital, land, or influential social networks must endure industrial activities that both create livelihoods—and destroy them. In doing so, the project contributes to anthropological debates on development by bringing insights from environmental anthropology and medical anthropology into conversation.