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Abstract
For some, recycling is a big business; for others a moralised way of engaging with the world. But, for many, this is a dangerous way of earning a living. With scrap now being the largest export category from the US to China, the sheer scale of this global trade has not yet been clearly identified or analysed. Combining fine-grained ethnographic analysis with overviews of international material flows, Economies of Recycling radically changes the way we understand global and local economies as well as the new social relations and identities created by recycling processes.
Following global material chains, this groundbreaking book reveals astonishing connections between persons, households, cities and global regions as objects are reworked, taken to pieces and traded. With case studies from Africa, Latin America, South Asia, China, the former Soviet Union, North America and Europe, this timely collection debunks common linear understandings of production, exchange and consumption and argues for a complete re-evaluation of North-South economic relationships.
Catherine Alexander is a professor of anthropology at Durham University.
Joshua Reno is an assistant professor of anthropology at Binghamton University.
'In this superb collection, what had been dismissed as mere waste or simple recycling is found to be immensely productive in the creation of a second tranche of commodities, complex labour relations, new global linkages, the creation of value and highly sophisticated analysis and theory. Only from this point can debate on these topics be genuinely called informed.'
Daniel Miller, Professor of Material Culture, University College London
'Garbage dumps in Rio, textile recycling in northern India, mountains of discarded IT equipment in China, global circulations of uranium: this remarkable collection really lifts the lid on the global sociologies, politics and geographies of waste and recycling - in their widest possible sense. The result is an unprecedented richness in understanding how the recycled use of all manner of materials work to sustain large swathes of our world and why this matters fundamentally for our planet's future. A genuine Tour de Force!'
Stephen Graham, Professor of Cities and Society, Newcastle University
Table of Contents
Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
---|---|---|---|
About the editors | i | ||
Figures | vii | ||
Acknowledgements | viii | ||
Introduction | 1 | ||
Histories and representations of recycling | 5 | ||
Economies of recycling | 15 | ||
Notes | 27 | ||
References | 27 | ||
Section One: Global waste flows | 33 | ||
1 | Shoddy rags and relief blankets: perceptions of textile recycling in north India | 35 | ||
Introduction | 35 | ||
The political economy of second-hand clothing | 36 | ||
Panipat industry | 37 | ||
1.1 Opening the bales of clothing | 42 | ||
1.2 Mountains of clothing are sorted into ‘colour families’ | 44 | ||
1.2 Mountains of clothing are sorted into ‘colour families’ prior to being cut up | 44 | ||
1.3 A woman cuts up a tailored coat | 46 | ||
Moral frameworks | 54 | ||
Acknowledgements | 55 | ||
Notes | 55 | ||
References | 56 | ||
2 | Death, the Phoenix and Pandora: transforming things and values in Bangladesh | 59 | ||
The ship as Pandora’s box: death and destruction on the beach | 59 | ||
2.1 Ship becoming steel | 63 | ||
Phoenix from the cutting torch flames: sites of transformation and revalorization | 65 | ||
2.2 Chock-chocky furnishings | 68 | ||
Domestic reincorporation and appropriation: shipshape and Bengali fashion | 69 | ||
Conclusions – the dangers of revalorization | 72 | ||
Notes | 74 | ||
References | 74 | ||
3 | One cycle to bind them all? Geographies of nuclearity in the uranium fuel cycle | 76 | ||
Defining the contours of the cycle, negotiating nuclearity | 79 | ||
3.1 Flows of uranium to conversion facilities needed for nuclear electricity production in France, 2008 | 82 | ||
3.2 The ‘closed nuclear cycle’ | 84 | ||
3.3 Waste and materials generated in the material fuel chain | 85 | ||
3.3 Waste and materialsgenerated in the materialfuel chain | 85 | ||
When spatial strategies fail (1): interrupted flows | 88 | ||
When spatial strategies fail (2): requalified materials | 90 | ||
Conclusion | 93 | ||
Notes | 94 | ||
References | 95 | ||
4 | The shadow of the global network: e-waste flows to China | 98 | ||
Introduction | 98 | ||
Transnational flows of e-waste | 99 | ||
Outline of the investigation | 102 | ||
Localization of imported e-waste recycling in coastal China | 103 | ||
4.1 Industrial clusters related to recycling e-waste in the Yangtze river delta | 104 | ||
4.2 The changing mode of competition in the global electronics industry | 108 | ||
Changing patterns of competition and innovation in the electronics industry | 108 | ||
4.3 The role of different players in WEEE recycling flows | 111 | ||
4.4 Different approaches in the EPR system | 112 | ||
5.1 An educational mural | 124 | ||
Concluding observations | 113 | ||
Notes | 114 | ||
References | 115 | ||
Section Two: The ethics of waste labour | 117 | ||
5 | Devaluing the dirty work: gendered trash work in participatory Dakar | 119 | ||
Introduction | 119 | ||
Description of the ENDA community-based trash project in Tonghor, Yoff | 121 | ||
5.1 An educational mural aimed at neighbourhood women on the wall of the eco-sanitation station in Tonghor, Yoff | 124 | ||
Producing community and empowerment in the space of trash | 124 | ||
Conclusions: a flurry of wings and the return of the trash truck | 133 | ||
Notes | 137 | ||
References | 140 | ||
6 | Stitching curtains, grinding plastic: social and material transformation in Buenos Aires | 143 | ||
19/20 December | 143 | ||
The right to work | 145 | ||
The BAUEN | 150 | ||
Cartoneando: from discarded workers to workers of waste | 154 | ||
6.1 Negative equivalences of linguistic value | 158 | ||
7.1 Catadores scramble to collect plastics | 166 | ||
Conclusion | 158 | ||
Notes | 159 | ||
References | 161 | ||
7 | Trash ties: urban politics, economic crisis and Rio de Janeiro’s garbage dump | 164 | ||
Theories of marginality and metaphors of waste | 164 | ||
7.1 Catadores scramble to collect plastics as a tractor-trailer unloads a mound of waste | 166 | ||
Part 1: The perils of social inclusion | 168 | ||
Part 2: At the centre of city politics | 173 | ||
Part 3: Catadores and the global economic crisis | 176 | ||
7.2 Bales of plastic bottles | 178 | ||
Conclusion: waste and the making of social relations | 181 | ||
Notes | 183 | ||
References | 183 | ||
8 | Sympathy and its boundaries: necropolitics, labour and waste on the Hooghly river | 185 | ||
Necropolitics on the Hooghly river | 185 | ||
Senses of workmanship: labour, vitality and waste | 187 | ||
Neoliberalism, public deficit and private enterprise on the Hooghly | 189 | ||
A state ethics of preservation: Ma Ganga, pedigrees of skill and the marine department of the Kolkata Port | 191 | ||
A private ethics of fluidity: Hanuman, trusted futures and India Private Ltd | 196 | ||
Conclusion: necropolitics, the metabolism of cities, labour and waste | 200 | ||
References | 202 | ||
Section Three: Traces of former lives | 205 | ||
9 | ‘No junk for Jesus’: redemptive economies and value conversions in Lutheran medical aid | 207 | ||
Introduction | 207 | ||
Circulating things not people: NGOs as Lutheran global actors | 210 | ||
Concealing the institutional life of hospital discards | 214 | ||
Converting medical supplies into useful things | 217 | ||
9.1 A process of reinstitutionalizing the biomedical discard | 218 | ||
9.2 An advisory medical professional in IHM’s ‘sorting room’ | 222 | ||
9.2 An advisory medical professional in IHM’s ‘sorting room’ in 2005/06 | 222 | ||
Sinfulness and ‘junk’ medical supplies | 224 | ||
Conclusion | 228 | ||
Notes | 230 | ||
References | 232 | ||
10 | Evident excess: material deposits and narcotics surveillance in the USA | 234 | ||
Introduction | 234 | ||
Revelation and representation | 238 | ||
Sewer epidemiology | 248 | ||
Conclusion | 251 | ||
Notes | 253 | ||
References | 254 | ||
Legal cases cited | 254 | ||
11 | Remont: work in progress | 255 | ||
Introduction | 255 | ||
Soviet remont in practice: from bedside lights to policy | 260 | ||
Post-Soviet remont | 265 | ||
Conclusions | 269 | ||
Acknowledgements | 272 | ||
Notes | 272 | ||
References | 273 | ||
Afterword: the apocalypse of objects – degradation, redemption and transcendence in the world of consumer goods | 277 | ||
Cosmologies have consequences | 278 | ||
On the significance of the prefix ‘eco-’ | 282 | ||
Back to recycling | 287 | ||
Notes | 289 | ||
References | 289 | ||
About the contributors | 291 | ||
Index | 294 |