In eleven sharp essays the contributors to Decay attend to the processes and experiences of symbolic and material decay in a variety of sociopolitical contexts across the globe. They examine decay in its myriad manifestationsbiological physical organizational moral political personal and social and in numerous contexts including colonialism and imperialism governments and the state racism the environment and infrastructure. The volumes topics are wide in scope ranging from the discourse of social decay in contemporary Australian settler colonialism and the ways infrastructures both create and experience decay to cultural decay in the aftermath of the Sri Lankan civil war and the relations among individual institutional and societal decay in an American highsecurity prison.