The Dirt
Discard studies is an emerging field that takes waste and wasting as its topic of study, including but beyond conventional notions of trash and garbage. To keep practitioners up-to-date, Discard Studies publishes The Dirt, a monthly compilation of recent publications, positions, opportunities, and calls for proposals in the field. Here is The Dirt for July 2019. If you have something to add to The Dirt, please email editors@discardstudies.com
Recent Discard Studies Posts
- The Tragedy of the Tragedy of the Commons by Matto Mildenberger
- Rethinking Remediation by Caitlynn Beckett and Arn Keeling
- Yes, Genocide (a primer on the term) #MMIWG by Ned Richardson-Little
- Disposability by Gay Hawkins
Publications (articles & books)
Note: If an article is behind a paywall, email the author. They are almost always authorized by copyright to distribute their own work.
- Ablitt, Jonathan., & James Smith, Robin. (2019). Working out Douglas’s aphorism: Discarded objects, categorisation practices, and moral inquiries. The Sociological Review, 67(4), 866-885.
- Álvarez-López, Valentina. (2019). Uncomfortable stains: Cleaning labour, class positioning and moral worth among working-class Chilean women. The Sociological Review, 67(4), 847-865.
- Balayannis, Angeliki. (2019). Routine Exposures: Reimaging the Visual Politics of Hazardous Sites. GeoHumanities, DOI: 10.1080/2373566X.2019.1624189
- Bonatti, Valeria, & Gille, Zsuzsa. (2019). Changing Registers of Visibility: Immigrant Labor and Waste Work in Naples, Italy. International Labor and Working-Class History, 95, 114-129.
- Bortolotti, Andrea. (2019). Assemblages of private waste management and recycling: The case of the Anderlecht marketplace in Brussels. Society and Business Review, 14(2), 174-185.
- Butt, Waqas H. (2019). Beyond the Abject: Caste and the Organization of Work in Pakistan’s Waste Economy. International Labor and Working-Class History, 95, 18-33.
- Carse, Ashley (2019). Dirty Landscapes: How Weediness Indexes State Disinvestment and Global Disconnection. in Kregg Hetherington (ed.). Infrastructure, Environment, and Life in the Anthropocene. pp. 97-114. Duke University Press.
- Chatterjee, Syantani. (2019). The Labors of Failure: Labor, Toxicity, and Belonging in Mumbai. International Labor and Working-Class History, 95, 49-75.
- Corvellec, Hervé, (2019) Waste as scats: For an organizational engagement with waste. Organization, 26(2) 217–235.
- Coumans, Catherine. (2018). Into the deep: science, politics and law in conflicts over marine dumping of mine waste. International Social Science Journal, 68(229-230), 303-323.
- DeLorenzo, Amy, Parizeau, Kate & von Massow, Mike. (2019). Regulating Ontario’s circular economy through food waste legislation. Society and Business Review 26(2).
- Doeland, Lisa. (2019). At home in an Unhomely world: On living with waste. Detritus 6: 4-10.
- Doherty, Jacob, & Brown, Kate. (2019). Labor Laid Waste: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Waste Work. International Labor and Working-Class History, 95, 1-17.
- Doherty, Jacob. (2019). Capitalizing Community: Waste, Wealth, and (Im) material Labor in Kampala. International Labor and Working-Class History, 95, 95-113.
- Estes, Nick, & Dhillon, Jaskiran. (Eds.). (2019). Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the# NoDAPL Movement. University of Minnesota Press.
- Horton, Amy. (2019). Financialization and non-disposable women: Real estate, debt and labour in UK care homes. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 0308518X19862580.
- Johnson, Matthew P. (2019). Black Gold of Paradise: Negotiating Oil Pollution in the US Virgin Islands, 1966–2012. Environmental History.
- Kenner, Alison. (2019). Emplaced care and atmospheric politics in unbreathable worlds. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space.
- Lamoreaux, Janelle. (2019). “Swimming in Poison”: Reimagining Endocrine Disruption through China’s Environmental Hormones. Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 8(1), 195-223.
- Luthra, Aman. (2019). Municipalization for privatization’s sake: Municipal solid waste collection services in urban India. Society and Business Review 14(2): 135-154.
- Masuda, Jeffrey R., Franks, Aaron, Kobayashi, Audrey, & Wideman, Trevor. (2019). After dispossession: An urban rights praxis of remaining in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 0263775819860850.
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Moffat, Natalie., & Pickering, Lucy. (2019). ‘Out of order’: The double burden of menstrual etiquette and the subtle exclusion of women from public space in Scotland. The Sociological Review, 67(4), 766-787.
- Norris, Lucy. (2019). Waste, dirt and desire: Fashioning narratives of material regeneration. The Sociological Review, 67(4), 886-907
- Pickering, Lucy., & Wiseman, Phillippa. (2019). Dirty scholarship and dirty lives: Explorations in bodies and belonging. The Sociological Review, 67(4), 746-765.
- Quint, Chella. (2019). From embodied shame to reclaiming the stain: Reflections on a career in menstrual activism. The Sociological Review, 67(4), 927-942.
- Rogaski, Ruth. (2019). Air/Qi Connections and China’s Smog Crisis: Notes from the History of Science. Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 8(1), 165-194.
- Solomon, Marisa. (2019). “The Ghetto is a Gold Mine”: The Racialized Temporality of Betterment. International Labor and Working-Class History, 95, 76-94.
- Samson, Melanie. (2019). Trashing Solidarity: The Production of Power and the Challenges to Organizing Informal Reclaimers. International Labor and Working-Class History, 95, 34-48.
- Stowell, Allison F., & Brigham, Martin. (2018). e-Waste trading zones and the economy of greening: Imbricating computer sourcing in the pre-and post-WEEE Directive era. Society and Business Review 14(2).
- Terreni Brown, Stephanie. (2019). Maps cannot tell the whole story: Interpreting the shitscape with a mixed methods approach. The Sociological Review, 67(4), 807-828.
- Tucker, Jennifer. (2019). Dangerous Exposures: Visualizing Work and Waste in the Victorian Chemical Trades. International Labor and Working-Class History, 95, 130-165.
- Vine, Michael. (2019). Beyond Touch: Cultivating Caring Atmospheres in Arid America. Journal for the Anthropology of North America, 22(1), 22-34.
- Wang, Bo. (2019). Sacred Trash and Personhood: Living in Daily Waste-Management Infrastructures in the Eastern Himalayas. Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 8(1), 224-248.
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Wiseman, Phillippa. (2019). Lifting the lid: Disabled toilets as sites of belonging and embodied citizenship. The Sociological Review, 67(4), 788-806.
- United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). 2019. “Addressing the challenge of Marine Plastic Litter using Circular Economy methods” (PDF).
Special Issues & Collection
- Air-Water-Land-Human: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Health and Environment in East Asia (2019). Special issue of Cross Currents. Edited by Ruth Rogaski
- An Anthropogenic Table of Elements (2019). Editors forum for Cultural Anthropology. Edited by Timothy Neale, Thao Phan, and Courtney Addison
- Down the Pan: New Directions in the Sociology of Dirt (2019). Special issue of Sociological Review. Edited by Lucy Pickering, Phillippa Wiseman and Sarah Armstrong.
- Labor Laid Waste, International Labor and Working-Class History. Volume 95 – Spring 2019
- Organizing and Managing Waste (2019). Special issue of Society and Business Review. Edited by Hervé Corvellec.
Dissertations & Theses
- Handley, Laura. (2018). Recycling or Relegating? Examining the Effects of the International Second-Hand Clothing Trade using the Greater Accra Region of Ghana as Case Study. Webster University Senior Thesis.
Calls for Proposals & Participation
- Call for participants: writing a plain-language glossary of crucial concepts in political ecology, alternative economics, and environmental justice. Uneven Earth.
- The Discard Studies Conference: Exploring Disposal’s Past, Present, and Future, NYC April 2020. Deadline: August 15, 2019
- Letting Go: Economies of Detachment, Journal of Consumption Markets & Culture, call for papers, June 30 2019.
- Network in Canadian History & Environment, Call for contributions: blog posts, audio/video media, and events (rolling deadline)
- Re-Opening the Bin: Waste, economy, culture and society, Call for abstracts and special sessions. June 11-13 2020. University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Deadline for contributions: 15 January 2020
Audio-Visual
- Radio Lab: Unfit
- Radio Lab: Unnatural Selection
- Radio Lab: Border Trilogy
- Our Chemicalized World, episode 4: Microplastics in the environment II
Positions and Opportunities
- Tier 2 Canada Research Chair (Assistant or Association Professor) in Self-Determination and Indigenous Connections to Land, Memorial University, Canada
- Tier 2 Canada Research Chair (Assistant or Associate Professor)– Social-Ecological Dimensions of Health and Wellbeing, Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Canada
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Postdoctoral tenure track position the Global Political Economy of Environment and Development, The Faculty of Landscape and Society (LANDSAM), the Department of International Environment and Development Studies (Noragric), Norway
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Postdoctoral tenure track position in interdisciplinary knowledge construction for Environmental Governance, The Faculty of Landscape and Society (LANDSAM), the Department of International Environment and Development Studies (Noragric), Norway
- Assistant Professor, Sociology (community and/or environmental health or the dynamic interplay between population and the environment), Utah State University
- Director of Environmental Humanities Development, Rachel Carson Center (RCC), Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich
- Environmental Humanities Program Associate, Rachel Carson Center (RCC), Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich
- Tenure-track faculty position, Sociology Department at Boston College (areas: crime and deviance, environment, health, poverty, race, and urban)
- Postdoctoral fellowship in East Asian Environmental Humanities, School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, France
- Faculty Position in Industrial Ecology and Sustainable Systems, Yale University, USA
- Assistant Professor, Sociology, Department of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology, Utah State University
- Assistant professor Environmental Governance, Faculty of Management, Science & Technology at the Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL)
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Critical and Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Queensland, Australia
If you have an item to add to The Dirt, please contact editors@discardstudies.com. We are especially interested in non-English language submissions, and those from outside North America.
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