Gabrielle Hecht ponders waste, world-ending, and toxic things. Her new book, Residual Governance: How South Africa Foretells Planetary Futures (Duke, 2023), examines the twinned residues of mining and racial capitalism in South Africa’s largest metropolis. The book’s title phrase references a deadly trifecta: the (under)regulation of wastes and discards; governance that is purposefully minimalist and inefficient; and governance that treats people and places as waste and wastelands. Foregrounding the voices of people who resisted residual governance and its toxic harms, the book reveals links between race, capitalism, the state, and the environment. It argues that the logic of residual governance lies at the heart of global racial capitalism and serves as a major accelerant of the Anthropocene.

Residual Governance received the 2024 Best Book Award in African Studies from the African Studies Association, the E. Ohnuki Tierney Award in Historical Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association, and two 2024 PROSE awards from the Association for American Publishers, one for Government & Politics and the other for Excellence in the Social Sciences. Hecht’s other books include Being Nuclear (MIT, 2012) and The Radiance of France (MIT, 1998/2009). Translated into nine languages, her publications have received awards in the fields of history of technology, science & technology studies, African studies, European history, sociology, and anthropology.