"Flammable" tells the story of Villa Inflamable (translated and referred to in the text as ‘Flammable’), a shantytown on the edge of Buenos Aires, hemmed in by a petrochemical complex and the festering waters of the Río de la Plata, and which was named for a ship explosion just offshore. It is, as Auyero and Swistun tell it, a story of urban relegation and environmental suffering, of people whose lives are shaped in profound and permanent ways by the toxic environment in which they live, and by the confusion, longing, and resignation produced by indifferent state bureaucracy, duplicitous corporations, and prying journalists (and, it must be said, researchers).