By Robin Nagle “What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded?” Emerson, “Self Reliance” Nannies, drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes, freelance carpenters, water entrepreneurs, “gypsy-cab” drivers, babysitters, street vendors and sidewalk gamesmen — what they all share in common is a life spent precariously under the radar (Venkatesh 2006), or […]
Read More »
By Max Liboiron There are two new DIY inventions out there that turn trash into speakers: Vibroy Vibrating Speakers and Trash Amp. There are a few refreshing twists to these gadgets; not only do they reverse the usual electronics-into-e-waste life cycle by adopting throw away objects as integral parts of sound systems, but in doing […]
Read More »
It has been twenty-five years since Arjun Appadurai penned “Commodities and the politics of value” as the introductory essay to the edited collection The Social Life of Things. In the text he offers the reader what appears to be a simple truism, that “commodities, like persons, have social lives.” Adding a dialectical twist to what […]
Read More »
Discard Studies 