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Economies of Recycling

Economies of Recycling

Catherine Alexander | Joshua Reno

(2012)

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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