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Abstract
What happens to people, places and objects that do not fit the ordering regimes and progressive narratives of modernity? Conventional understandings imply that progress leaves such things behind, and excludes them as though they were valueless waste. This volume uses the concept of indeterminacy to explore how conditions of exclusion and abandonment may give rise to new values, as well as to states of despair and alienation. Drawing upon ethnographic research about a wide variety of contexts, the chapters here explore how indeterminacy is created and experienced in relationship to projects of classification and progress.
Catherine Alexander is Professor of Anthropology at Durham University. Before her current appointment, she worked at Goldsmiths for ten years. She has published widely on wastes and recycling – including Economies of Recycling, co-edited with Joshua Reno (Zed Books, 2012) – as well as economic and urban anthropology.
“An excellent topic. What I liked in particular was the sense of cohesion… The authors have addressed situations that speak to each other.” • Bjørn Thomassen, Roskilde University
Andrew Sanchez is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. He has published widely on economy and labor, and is the author of Criminal Capital: Violence, Corruption and Class in Industrial India (Routledge, 2015).
Table of Contents
Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
---|---|---|---|
Indeterminacy | iii | ||
Copyright | iv | ||
Contents | v | ||
List of Figures | vi | ||
Introduction. The Values of Indeterminacy | 1 | ||
Chapter 1. Kept in Suspense | 31 | ||
Chapter 2. Experiments in Living | 50 | ||
Chapter 3. The Production of Indeterminacy | 68 | ||
Chapter 4. Human Waste in the Land of Abundance | 89 | ||
Chapter 5. Waste People/Value Producers | 112 | ||
Chapter 6. Indeterminate Classifications | 134 | ||
Chapter 7. The Politics of Indeterminacy | 161 | ||
Epilogue. Indeterminancy | 181 | ||
Index | 195 |