Raw Materials

Raw Materials (working title) is an ethnographic book project that investigates the long-term social, environmental, and health consequences of legacy pollution from textile manufacturing in the United States. As textile mills and garment factories have shuttered, the communities that once fueled America’s clothing industry are left with contaminated soil, toxic waterways, compromised health, and ongoing economic disinvestment.

This project asks: What remains after the industry leaves? How does the residue of textile production continue to shape the lives, bodies, and landscapes of people living in its wake?

The book focuses on communities across the U.S. South, Northeast, and industrial Midwest—regions historically shaped by the rise and fall of textile manufacturing. It explores:
• Chemical legacies from dyeing, bleaching, and finishing processes, including PFAS, heavy metals, and formaldehyde in air, soil, and water.
• Health disparities among workers and residents near former production sites, from respiratory illness and cancer clusters to reproductive harm.
• Environmental degradation of rivers, groundwater, and land used for factory dumping or unregulated disposal.
• Social memory and resistance, documenting how communities live with, remember, and respond to the ecological burdens of a shuttered economic lifeway.

Raw Materials is grounded in place-based ethnography and informed by environmental justice, critical geography, and deindustrialization studies. The project involves interviews, oral histories, archival research, and site visits to former mill towns and production hubs.

This work prioritizes the knowledge of residents, former textile workers, health advocates, and environmental organizers. It seeks to challenge extractive narratives by collaborating with communities whose stories have too often been overlooked, silenced, or erased.

Rather than viewing pollution as a thing of the past, Raw Materials treats it as a living inheritance—a material and political presence that continues to shape the possibilities for health, dignity, and survival in post-industrial America.

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If you live or have lived near a former textile mill, garment factory, or textile wet processing site in the U.S., your voice matters.

The Textile Anthropologist is currently seeking participants and collaborators for the Raw Materials project who have:
• Personal or family histories tied to textile or garment production
• Experiences with health concerns or environmental contamination related to the industry
• Knowledge of community organizing, clean-up efforts, or policy work on textile pollution
• Archival materials, oral histories, or lived memories tied to textile industry towns

Your experiences and perspectives will be treated with care, confidentiality, and respect. The goal is not to extract stories, but to co-create knowledge that brings visibility to the hidden costs of a powerful industry—and the resilience of the people most impacted.

📬 To participate or learn more, please contact: hello@textileanthropologist.com