  This is paper I of a series of two papers, offering a self-contained analysis
of the role of electromagnetic stress-energy-momentum tensors in the classical
description of continuous polarizable perfectly insulating media. While
acknowledging the primary role played by the total stress-energy-momentum
tensor we argue that it is meaningful and useful in the context of covariant
constitutive theory to assign preferred status to particular parts of this
total tensor, when defined with respect to a particular splitting. The
relevance of tensors, associated with the electromagnetic fields that appear in
Maxwell's equations for polarizable media, to the forces and torques that they
induce has been a debated since Minkowski, Einstein and Abraham considered
these issues over a century ago. Consistency with the laws of Newtonian
continuum mechanics demands that the total force density on any element of a
medium be proportional to the local linear acceleration field of that element
in an inertial frame and must also arise as part of the divergence of the total
stress-energy-momentum tensor. The fact that, unlike the tensor proposed by
Minkowski, the divergence of the Abraham tensor depends explicitly on the local
acceleration field of the medium as well as the electromagnetic field, sets it
apart from many other terms in the total stress-energy-momentum tensor for a
medium. We explore how electromagnetic forces or torques on moving media can be
defined in terms of a particular 3-form on spacetimes that exhibit particular
Killing symmetries. It is shown how the forms associated with translational
Killing vector fields lead to explicit expressions for the electromagnetic
force densities in stationary media subject to the Minkowski constitutive
relations. These are compared with other models involving polarizable media in
electromagnetic fields that have been considered in the recent literature.
