What is the state of discard studies in anthropology? If you’re going to the AAA conference next week, you can see for yourself. Otherwise, the conference schedule provides an interesting overview text in and of itself:

Wednesday, November 20

Panels:

LOST AND FOUND
Reviewed By: Society for Cultural Anthropology
Wednesday, November 20, 2013: 12:00 PM-1:45 PM
Williford A (Chicago Hilton)
with:

12:00 PM
Placed-and-Found Objects and Ethnographic Poetics in the U.S.|Mexico Borderlands
David Seibert (University of Arizona)

12:15 PM
Evaluating the Invaluable/Valueless: Examining Dynamic Interpretations of ‘traces Left Behind’
Linda Catherine Chisholm (University of Minnesota) and Kirsten E H Jenkins (University of Minnesota)

12:30 PM
Oil Theft and Oily Residues in Nigeria’s Hydrocarbon Fields
Elizabeth Gelber (Columbia University)

12:45 PM
The Penguin Found in Leningrad
Xenia A Cherkaev (Columbia University)

1:00 PM
Discussant
Gustav Peebles (The New School)

Individual papers:

Chasing Paradise Lost: The Boom of Contemporary Ruins in Millennial Japan
Wednesday, November 20, 2013: 9:00 PM
Conference Room 5I (Chicago Hilton)
Hirofumi Katsuno (Doshisha University)

Multiple Spaces and Times of Superstorm Sandy: Governments, Activists, and Sanitation Workers in New York City
Wednesday, November 20, 2013: 12:15 PM
Conference Room 4M (Chicago Hilton)
Max Liboiron (Northeastern University)

Metabolism, Reproduction, and the Aftermath of Categories
Wednesday, November 20, 2013: 2:15 PM
Salon A-5 (Chicago Hilton)
Hannah Landecker (University of California, Los Angeles)

Breathing In and Out of Place: Environmental Embodiment in U.S. Asthma Care
Wednesday, November 20, 2013: 3:00 PM
Joliet Room (Chicago Hilton)
Alison Kenner (DREXEL UNIVERSITY)

Urban Mining, Toxic Payload: Scrutinizing the E-Waste Trade in East Asia and Beyond
Wednesday, November 20, 2013: 8:00 PM
Conference Room 4M (Chicago Hilton)
Peter Wynn Kirby (University of Oxford)

Certificates, Waste, and the Making of ‘Sustainable’ Ethanol in Brazil and Mozambique
Wednesday, November 20, 2013: 8:15 PM
Boulevard C (Chicago Hilton)
Nicole Labruto (Massachusetts Inst of Tech and Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Dengue Fever, Trash Collection and Public Health Citizenships in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
Wednesday, November 20, 2013: 9:15 PM
Conference Room 5F (Chicago Hilton)
Christopher Alley (Columbia University)

Thursday, November 21

Panel:

INVISIBLE HARM: SCIENCE, SUBJECTIVITY, AND THE THINGS WE CANNOT SEE
Reviewed By: Society for Medical Anthropology
Thursday, November 21, 2013: 8:00 AM-11:45 AM
Lake Ontario Room (Chicago Hilton)

with:

Visible Tics and Invisible Harms: Sedating the Girls Of Leroy, New York
Donna M. Goldstein (University of Colorado-Boulder) and Kira Hall (University of Colorado, Boulder)
8:15 AM

Agricultural Pesticides, Rodenticides, and Childhood Poisoning: Invisible Harms Among the Urban Poor in the Western Cape, South Africa
Susan L Levine (University of Cape Town) and Hanna-Andrea Rother (University of Cape Town)
8:30 AM

The Ecobiopolitics of Pesticides: Farmworkers and Contested Environmental Suffering in the Pajaro Valley, California
Dvera I Saxton (Northeastern University and Northeastern University)
8:45 AM

Kidney Disease and Invisible Harm in Mexico: Cause, Capitalism and Technological Advance
Ciara M Kierans (University of Liverpool)
9:00 AM

Pharmaceutical Companies Care About You, But They Also Need to Correct a Few Points From Their Last Ad
Jessica A Bodoh-Creed (University of California, Riverside and California State University, Los Angeles)
9:15 AM

The Promising “Afterglow” of Nuclear Industry: Leaking Uranium Tailings Ponds, Contaminated Groundwater and the Production of Corporate Harm in Colorado
Claire McFadyen (University of Colorado-Boulder)
9:30 AM

Discussant
Merrill C Singer (University of Connecticut)
9:45 AM

Break
10:00 AM

An Historical Examination of Invisible Harm
Gregory V Button (University of Tennessee Knoxville)
10:15 AM

Clear Danger: The Science of Invisibility in New York City’s Outdoor Clean Air Laws
Emily Anne McDonald (University of California-San Francisco)
10:30 AM

The “Natural” Pharmaceutical: How Pitocin Became a Standard of Care For Women Giving Birth
Anna Hermann (University of Colorado-Boulder)
10:45 AM

Invisible Harms At The Bottom Of The Ocean: Bp’s ‘clean Up’ With Dispersants
Lindsay Ofrias (University of Colorado-Boulder)
11:00 AM

“Off-the-cuff” Expertise and Causal Conflicts: Theories of Health and Harm 30 Years After Bhopal
Bridget Hanna (Harvard University)
11:15 AM

Fracking Uncertainty: Individual Harms For Public Health
Michael Fitch (University of Colorado, Boulder)
11:30 AM

Discussant
Linda M Whiteford (University of South Florida)

Individual papers:

Rituals of Race: Feminine Hygiene Practices, Common Experience, and Relative Power
Thursday, November 21, 2013: 1:45 PM
Mobley Room (Chicago Hilton)
Angela Kristine Guy-Lee (Wayne State University)

Friday, November 22

Panels:

CHEMICAL AESTHETICS
Reviewed By: Society for Cultural Anthropology
Friday, November 22, 2013: 10:15 AM-12:00 PM
Conference Room 4M (Chicago Hilton)
with:

10:15 AM
Molecular Memories: Specters of Taste in American Processed Foods
Ella Butler (University of Chicago)

10:30 AM
Sliquids
Gretchen A Bakke (McGill University)

10:45 AM
Chemical Freshness, Chemical Fetish
Nicholas E Shapiro (University of Oxford and Goldsmiths)

11:00 AM
Banging, Bumping, and Plugging: The Embodied Aesthetics of Opioid Addiction Medication Preferences
Shan-Estelle Brown (Yale University School of Medicine)

11:15 AM
Fizzy Facts: Chemical Analysis, Carbonation, and the Transformation of Taste for Mineral Water
Christy Spackman (NYU)

11:30 AM
Discussant
Natasha Sara Myers (York University)

UNDEADENING DEATH
Reviewed By: Society for Cultural Anthropology
Friday, November 22, 2013: 4:00 PM-5:45 PM
Conference Room 5F (Chicago Hilton)

with:

4:00 PM
When Death Is a Public Secret
Julie Livingston (Rutgers University)

4:15 PM
Bringing Things Back to Life: A Conversation Between Anthropology and Contemporary Art
Bhrigupati Singh (Brown University)

4:30 PM
Planting Futures On the Edge of Death: Nuclear Japan
Anne Allison (Duke University)

4:45 PM
Sounding Death
Lisa M Stevenson (McGill University)

5:00 PM
Living Hell: On Death and Demonic Exposure in Northern Ghana
Brian Goldstone (Columbia University)

5:15 PM
Discussant
Clara Y Han (Johns Hopkins University)

Workshop:

Grassroots Mapping and DIY Industrial Monitoring: Low Cost, Open Source Techniques For Community-Academic Collaboration In Environmental and Cultural Anthropology
Sponsored By: Culture and Agriculture
Friday, November 22, 2013: 3:00 PM-6:00 PM
Conference Room 4A (Chicago Hilton)

Individual papers:

Seeing Like the Environment?: Sincerity, Waste and Interior States in the West Bank
Friday, November 22, 2013: 8:45 AM
Buckingham (Chicago Hilton)
Sophia C Stamatopoulou-Robbins (Columbia University / Bard College)

‘Downhill From Everywhere’: Watershed Solutions for Plastic Ocean Pollution
Friday, November 22, 2013: 10:15 AM
Continental A (Chicago Hilton)
Kim De Wolff (University of California San Diego)

Discarded Europe: Money, Trash, and the Possibilities of a New Temporality
Friday, November 22, 2013: 4:15 PM
Conference Room 4E (Chicago Hilton)
Elana F Resnick (University of Michigan)

Saturday, November 23

Panels:

BEYOND PURITY AND POLLUTION? HYGIENE, CLEANLINESS, AND URBAN FUTURES
Reviewed By: General Anthropology Division
Saturday, November 23, 2013: 10:15 AM-12:00 PM
PDR 5 (Chicago Hilton)

with:

10:15 AM
Cleaning the City and Burying the Past: The Landfill Conundrum
Sarah Hill (Western Michigan University)

10:30 AM
How to Produce Cleanliness With Dirtiness? The Northern League’s Paradoxical device 
Lynda Dematteo (TRAM IIAC (CNRS – EHESS))

10:45 AM
‘Disease of filth’ Or ‘disease of development’? Constructions of Epidemic Polio and the Hygiene Hypothesis in the Early 20th Century
Heather T Battles (McMaster University)

11:00 AM
Clean Homeland: The Politics of Waste Management In Cairo
Mohammed Rafi Arefin (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Danya Al-Saleh (CUNY Graduate Center)

11:15 AM
Religious Taboo in the Age of Biopolitics: How the Egyptian Government Decided to Slaughter All the Country’s Pigs in Response to H1N1 Influenza
Jamie Furniss (University of Edinburgh)

11:30 AM
Discussant
John F Collins (Queens College, CUNY)

11:45 AM
Discussant
Joshua O Reno (Binghamton University, SUNY)

Individual papers:

Watsan Systems Management: The Politics of Conservation and Use in Potable Water, Sewerage, and Wastewater Treatment Systems in Alto Beni, Bolivia
Saturday, November 23, 2013: 9:00 AM
Williford A (Chicago Hilton)
Maryann R. Cairns (University of South Florida)

Ruins in the Making: An Exploration of Conspicuous Construction At China’s Urban Frontiers
Saturday, November 23, 2013: 9:00 AM
Windsor Court (Essex Inn)
Michael Alexander Ulfstjerne (Copenhagen University)

The New Old Beijing: Reconfiguring Modern Ruins At Dashilar
Saturday, November 23, 2013: 10:00 AM
Boulevard C (Chicago Hilton)
Victoria Nguyen (University of Chicago)

Low-Carbon Life in Dongping Lane:  Tealeaf Pillows, Talking Garbage Bins and the Environmentalist Magic of Earthworms
Saturday, November 23, 2013: 11:00 AM
Windsor Court (Essex Inn)
Nikolaj Vendelbo Blichfeldt (University of Copenhagen)

Ruins of the Future
Saturday, November 23, 2013: 2:15 PM
Marquette Room (Chicago Hilton)
Akhil Gupta (University of California Los Angeles)

‘Wastelandia’: Infrastructure and the Commonwealth of Waste in Urban Ghana
Saturday, November 23, 2013: 3:00 PM
Marquette Room (Chicago Hilton)
Brenda Chalfin (University of Florida)

Obsolescence: An Urban Story
Saturday, November 23, 2013: 4:00 PM
Barbershop (Renaissance Blackstone Hotel)
Atreyee Majumder (Yale University)

Sunday, November 24

Panel:

ETHNOGRAPHIES OF EXPOSURE: RETHINKING BODY-ENVIRONMENT RELATION
Reviewed By: Society for Medical Anthropology
Sunday, November 24, 2013: 8:00 AM-9:45 AM
Conference Room 5H (Chicago Hilton)

8:00 AM
Balancing Exposures: On Becoming a Construction Worker Body
Adam Sargent (The University of Chicago)

8:15 AM
Particulate Exposures: Life and Breath in Urban North China
Jerry C Zee (University of California, Berkeley)

8:30 AM
Desert Tactics: The Politics of Migrant Exposure and Abandonment On the Arizona-Mexico Border
Rocio Magana (Rutgers University)

8:45 AM
The Politics of Becoming in Exposure: Andean ‘mongoloids’, Coastal ‘delinquents’, and the Science of Lead Contamination in Central Peru
Stefanie Graeter (UC Davis)

9:00 AM
We Are All Reassortants: Ecology, Bird Flu, and the Emergence of the Pandemic Human
Theresa MacPhail (New York University)

9:15 AM
Discussant
Michael A Fortun (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Individual papers:

Fabricating Caste: Ritual, Text, and Pollution in the Emergence of a Brahman Caste in Twentieth Century India
Sunday, November 24, 2013: 8:30 AM
Continental C (Chicago Hilton)
Sammit Khandeparkar (Arizona State University)

Places of Resistance, Ruination and Remembrance in South Lebanon
Sunday, November 24, 2013: 12:30 PM
Conference Room 5C (Chicago Hilton)
Munira Khayyat (American University in Cairo)

Material Remains: Labors in the Archives of Waste
Sunday, November 24, 2013: 12:30 PM
Boulevard C (Chicago Hilton)
Robin Nagle (New York University)

The Social Life of Ruins and the Politics of Debris in “pre-Olympic” Rio De Janeiro
Sunday, November 24, 2013: 1:00 PM
Conference Room 5C (Chicago Hilton)
Mariana Cavalcanti (Fundacao Getulio Vargas)

An Ecology of Taste: By-Catch and Food Preference in the Seascapes of Eastern Hokkaido
Sunday, November 24, 2013: 1:15 PM
PDR 4 (Chicago Hilton)
Shingo Hamada (Indiana University)