Discard studies is a young field of research that takes systems of 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. Since we were on strike, here is The Dirt for March to September 2020.

Recent Discard Studies Posts

• Roundup: Waste & COVID-19 by Max Liboiron
• Agbogbloshie: Dumping no more by Dagna Rams
• A Bibliography of Trash Animals by Alex Zahara

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.

We have begun posting the gender parity of The Dirt, especially given evidence that COVID-19 is increasing the skew in knowledge production to be ever more male, white, and childless. This bibliography has 42.87% women authors, based on Dr. Jane Summer’s  Gender Balance Assessment Tool.

• Åkerman, Maria., Humalisto, Niko., & Pitzen, Samuli. (2020). Material politics in the circular economy: The complicated journey from manure surplus to resource. Geoforum, 116, 73-80.
• Alexander, Catherine., & O’Hare, Patrick. (2020). Waste and Its Disguises: Technologies of (Un) Knowing. Ethnos, 1-25.
• Amago, Samuel. (2019). Waste and Space in Contemporary Spain: Photographic Archaeologies of the Anthropocene. Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, 23(1), 145-166.
• Bailey, Lucy. E. (2020). Waste Is Women’s Domain: A Review of a 19th Century Housekeeping Manual. Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, 19(3), 11.
• Balayannis, Angeliki. (2020). Toxic sights: The spectacle of hazardous waste removal. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 0263775819900197.
• Balayannis, Angeliki., & Garnett, Emma. (2020). Chemical Kinship: Interdisciplinary Experiments with Pollution. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 6.1 (2020).
• Banoub, Daniel., & Martin, Sarah. J. (2020). Storing value: The infrastructural ecologies of commodity storage. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 0263775820911942.
• Barba, Mayra G. Sánchez. (2020). ‘Keeping Them Down’: Neurotoxic Pesticides, Race, and Disabling Biopolitics. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 6.1 (2020).
• Barnard, Alex V. & Mourad, Marie. (2020). From Dumpster Dives to Disco Vibes: The Shifting Shape of Food Waste Activism. In Routledge Handbook of Food Waste (pp. 381-399). Routledge.
• Barry, Janice., & Agyeman, Julian. (2020). On belonging and becoming in the settler-colonial city: Co-produced futurities, placemaking, and urban planning in the United States. Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City, 1-20.
• Bay, Alexandre R. (2019). Disciplining shit. Japan Forum, 31(4): 556-582.
• Bear, Christopher. (2019). Approaching Insect Death: Understandings and Practices of the UK’s Edible Insect Farmers. Society & Animals, 27(7), 751-768.
• Beckett, Caitlynn. (2020). Beyond remediation: Containing, confronting and caring for the Giant Mine Monster. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2514848620954361.
• Beigi, Tina., & Picard, Micheal Hennessey (2020). Regimes of waste (im) perceptibility in the life cycle of metal. Transnational Legal Theory, 11(1-2), 197-218.
• Boyles, Andrea. S. (2020). Racial‐spatial politics: Policing Black citizens in white spaces and a 21st‐century uprising. American Ethnologist, 47(2), 150-154.
• Bredenbröker, Isabel, Christina Hanzen, and Felix Kotzur. (eds) (2020). Cleaning and Value. Interdisciplinary Investigations, Sidestone Press (Leiden), pp. 23-38.
• Bresnihan, Patrick., & Hesse, Arielle. (2020). Political ecologies of infrastructural and intestinal decay. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2514848620902382.
• Brock, Andrea. (2020). Securing accumulation by restoration–Exploring spectacular corporate conservation, coal mining and biodiversity compensation in the German Rhineland. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2514848620924597.
• Brodiez-Dolino, Axelle. (2019). L’être humain comme “déchet social”? L’irrécupérabilité dans la France des Trente Glorieuses. (The human being as “social waste”? “Irrecoverability” in France, 1950s-1960s). Tracés. Revue de Sciences humaines, (37), 55-72.
• Butt, Waqas. H. (2020). Waste intimacies: Caste and the unevenness of life in urban Pakistan. American Ethnologist. DOI: 10.1111/amet.12960
• Butt, Waqas. H. (2020). Accessing Value in Lahore’s Waste Infrastructures. Ethnos, 1-21.
• Capponi, Giovanna. (2020). The taste of waste: reclaiming and sharing rotten food among squatters in London. Food, Culture & Society, 23(4), 489-505.
• Carter, Chelsey R. (2020). Trauma at home: A queer Black feminist’s experience in the afterlife of state‐sanctioned violence in Ferguson. American Ethnologist, 47(2), 168-172.
• Chan, Kin Wing (Ray) (2020). Politics of smell: Constructing animal waste governmentality and good farming subjectivities in colonial Hong Kong. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 2399654420914320.
• Corteel, Delphine, Houdart, Sophie, Guitard, Émilie, & Monsaingeon, Baptiste. (2019). Des fripes, des restes et des champignons: de l’irrécupérable en toute chose et de quoi en faire dans un monde fini. (Rags, remnants and fungi: about the totally irrecoverable and how to deal with it in a finite world). Tracés. Revue de Sciences humaines, (37), 157-178.
• Crang, Phillip., Brickell, Katherine., Parsons, Laurie., Natarajan, Nithya., Cristofoletti, Thomas., & Graham, Naomi. (2020). Discardscapes of fashion: commodity biography, patch geographies, and preconsumer garment waste in Cambodia. Social & Cultural Geography, 1-20.
• da Silva, Tatianna Mello Pereira. (2019). A Materially Contextualised Account of Waste Pickers’ Marginalisation in Brazil: The Case of ‘Rubbish PET’. Worldwide Waste: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2(1).
• De Coss-Corzo, Alejandro. (2020). Patchwork: Repair labor and the logic of infrastructure adaptation in Mexico City. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 0263775820938057.
• Dey, Tridibesh. (2020). COVID-19 as method: Managing the ubiquity of waste and waste-collectors in India. Journal of Legal Anthropology, 4(1), 76-91.
• Fiske, Amelia. (2020). Naked in the Face of Contamination. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 6(1).
• Fox, Sarah, Noura Howell, Richmond Wong, and Franchesca Spektor. (2019). Vivewell: Speculating Near-Future Menstrual Tracking through Current Data Practices. In Proceedings of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference, pp. 541-552. 2019.
• Fournier, Lauren. (2020). Fermenting Feminism as Methodology and Metaphor: Approaching Transnational Feminist Practices through Microbial Transformation. Environmental Humanities, 12(1), 88-112.
• Frantzen, Mikkel Krause, & Bjering, Jens. (2020). Ecology, Capitalism and Waste: From Hyperobject to Hyperabject. Theory, Culture & Society
• Garnett, Emma. (2020). Breathing Spaces: Modelling Exposure in Air Pollution Science. Body & Society, 26(2), 55-78.
• Ghertner, D. Asher (2020). Airpocalypse: Distributions of Life amidst Delhi’s Polluted Airs. Public Culture, 32(1): 133–162.
• Gillespie, Katharyn. (2020). The afterlives of the lively commodity: Life-worlds, death-worlds, rotting-worlds. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space.
• Grandia, Liza. (2020). Carpet Bombings: A Drama of Chemical Injury in Three Acts. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 6(1).
• Grant, Jenna. (2020). Repair in Translation. East Asian Science, Technology and Society, 14(1), 15-33.
• Greeson, Emma, Stefan Laser, and Olli Pyyhtinen. (2020). Dis/Assembling Value: Lessons from Waste Valuation Practices. Valuation Studies.
• Guasco, Anna. (2020). ‘As dead as a dodo’: Extinction narratives and multispecies justice in the museum. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2514848620945310.
• Guitard, Émilie, & Krtolica, Igor. (2019). “Mendiants thésauriseurs”,”Diogènes” ou “Pluchkines”: travailler auprès de personnes vivant dans l’incurie en France. (“Beggar hoarders”, “Diogenes”, “Plyushkins”: working close to self-neglected people in France). Tracés. Revue de Sciences humaines, (37), 181-203.
• Hawkins, Gay. (2020). Detaching from plastic packaging: reconfiguring material responsibilities. Consumption Markets & Culture, 1-14.
• Heidelberg, Roy L., and Sarah Surak. (2020). The administrative making of the recycler. Policy Studies: 1-19.
• Hecht, Gabrielle. (2020). Human Crap. Aeon, March 25.
• Hernández, K. J., June M. Rubis, Noah Theriault, Zoe Todd, Audra Mitchell, Bawaka Country, Laklak Burarrwanga, Ritjilili Ganambarr, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, Banbapuy Ganambarr, Djawundil Maymuru, Sandie Suchet-Pearson, Kate Lloyd Sarah Wright “The Creatures Collective: Manifestings.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space (2020): 2514848620938316.
• Hird, Myra J. & Cassandra Kuyvenhoven (2020). Moving waste around: Recycling and the governance of waste management. in Opening the bin.
• Ialenti, Vincent. (2020). Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now. MIT Press.
• Ialenti, Vincent. (2020). Spectres of Seppo: the afterlives of Finland’s nuclear waste experts. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13247
• Isenhour, Cindy, and Brieanne Berry. (2020). “Still good life”: On the value of reuse and distributive labor in “depleted” rural Maine. Economic Anthropology, 7(2), 293-308.
• Johnson Jr, Odis. (2020). Five years later, but centuries in the making: Ferguson, racial segregation, and fatal interactions with police. American Ethnologist, 47(2), 142-146.
• Jones, Owain., Rigby, Kate., & Williams, Linda. (2020). Everyday Ecocide, Toxic Dwelling, and the Inability to Mourn: A Response to Geographies of Extinction. Environmental Humanities, 12(1), 388-405.
• Kalina, Marc. and Elizabeth Tilley (2020) ‘Bad’ Trash: Problematising Waste in Blantyre, Malawi. Detritus. 11.
• Kalina, Marc. (2020). Treating the Symptom? A Marxist Reflection on ‘Zero Waste’ and Sardina 2019 Symposium. Detritus, (9), 4, 4-10.
• Kalina, Marc. (2020) Waste Management in a More Unequal World: Centring Inequality in our Waste and Climate Change Discourse. Local Environment.
• Kim, Sung Hwan., Kim, Hyomin., & Song, Sungsoo. (2020). Public Deliberation on South Korean Nuclear Power Plants: How Can Lay Knowledge Resist against Expertise?. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, 14(3), 459-477.
• Kneas, David. (2020). Placing Resources: Junior Mining Companies and the Locus of Mineral Potential. Geoforum.
• Kojola, Erik. (2020). Who Speaks for the Place? Cultural Dynamics of Conflicts Over Hazardous Industrial Development. In Sociological Forum.
• Kojola, Erik., & McMillan Lequieu, Amanda. (2020). Performing transparency, embracing regulations: corporate framing to mitigate environmental conflicts. Environmental Sociology, 1-11.
• Kwon, Jong Bum. (2020). Troubling whiteness: An interview with Mary Ferguson (Witnessing Whiteness) and Tiffany Robertson (Touchy Topics Tuesday). American Ethnologist, 47(2), 176-181.
• Kwon, Jong Bum. (2020). Paradoxes of white moral experience: Opaque selves, racial suspicion, and the ethics of whiteness. American Ethnologist, 47(2), 184-191.
• Lasker, Grace. A., & Simcox, Nancy. J. (2020). Using Feminist Theory and Social Justice Pedagogy to Educate a New Generation of Precautionary Principle Chemists. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 6(1).
• Lee, Rachel. (2020). A Lattice of Chemicalized Kinship. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 6(1).
• Lehtonen, Turo-Kimmo, and Olli Pyyhtinen. (2020). From Trash to Treasure: Valuing Waste in Dumpster Diving. Valuation Studies, 7(2), 197-220.
• Lepawsky, Josh. (2020). Sources and Streams of Electronic Waste. One Earth, 3(1), 13-16.
• Lepawsky, Josh. (2020). Planet of fixers? Mapping the middle grounds of independent and do‐it‐yourself information and communication technology maintenance and repair. Geo: Geography and Environment, 7(1), e00086.
• Little, Peter C. (2020). Witnessing e-waste through participatory photography in Ghana. In Toxic truths. Manchester University Press.
• Luthra, Aman. (2020). Efficiency in waste collection markets: Changing relationships between firms, informal workers, and the state in urban India. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 0308518X20913011.
• Luthra, Aman. (2020). Housewives and maids: The labor of household recycling in urban India. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2514848620914219.
• Martinez, Fransisco., & Beilmann, Kaia. (2020). Waste and postsocialism in Estonia: Becoming European through the management of rubbish. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 2399654420925083.
• McKay, Micah. (2020). “Pasto sin fin del basurero”: Trash and Disposal in the Poetry of Jose Emilio Pacheco. Latin American Literary Review, 47(93), 49-59.
• Mehrabi, Tara. (2020). Queer Ecologies of Death in the Lab: Rethinking Waste, Decomposition and Death through a Queerfeminist Lens. Australian Feminist Studies, 1-17.
• Meneley, Anne. (2020). Hope in the ruins: Seeds, plants, and possibilities of regeneration. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2514848620917516.
• Millar, Kathleen. M. (2020) Garbage as Racialization. Anthropology and Humanism 45(1). DOI: 10.1111/anhu.12267
• Mitchell, Audra., & Chaudhury, Aadita. (2020). Worlding beyond ‘the’‘end’of ‘the world’: white apocalyptic visions and BIPOC futurisms. International Relations, 0047117820948936.
• Moisi, Laura. (2020). Die Politisierung des Abfalls: Elemente einer Kulturtheorie häuslicher Müllentsorgung. De Gruyter.
• Mol, Annemarie. (2020). Not quite clean: Trailing schoon and its resonances. The Sociological Review, 68(2), 385-400.
• Morgan, Alli., & Fortun, Kim. (2020). Toxic Soldiers, Flickering Knowledges, and Enlisted Care. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 6(1).
• Morgan, Vanessa Sloan., Hoogeveen, Dawn., Farrales, May., Gislason, Maya K., Parkes, Margot. W., & Harder, Henry. G. (2020). Resource extraction and intersectoral research: Engaging accountable relations in the Environment Community Health Observatory Network. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 2399654420951805.
• Müller, Simone. M. (2019). Hidden externalities: The globalization of hazardous waste. Business History Review, 93(1), 51-74.
• Murcott, Melanie., & Webster, Emily. (2020). Litigation and regulatory governance in the age of the Anthropocene: the case of fracking in the Karoo. Transnational Legal Theory, 11(1-2), 144-164.
• Murphy, Michelle. (2020). Some keywords towards decolonial methods: Studying settler colonial histories and environmental violence from Tkaronto. History and Theory 59(3): 376-384.
• Nading, Alex M. (2020). Living in a Toxic World. Annual Review of Anthropology, 49.
• Neubert, Christopher. (2020). The Anthropocene stinks! Odor, affect, and the entangled politics of livestock waste in a rural Iowa watershed. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 0263775820919768
• Offenhuber, Dietmar. (2020). Towards ethical legibility: An inclusive view of waste technologies. The Routledge Companion to Smart Cities. Edited by Katharine S. Willis, Alessandro Aurigi. Routledge.
• O’Laughlin, Logan Natalie. (2020). Troubling Figures: Endocrine Disruptors, Intersex Frogs, and the Logics of Environmental Science. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 6(1).
• Ong, Corinne., Fearnley, Lyle., & Chia, Siow Boon. (2020). The diversity of divestment in Singapore: Junk commodities, charity gifts, and recycling bins. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2514848620924564.
• Palmer, Meredith Alberta. (2020). Rendering settler sovereign landscapes: Race and property in the Empire State. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 0263775820922233.
• Parikh, Shanti., & Kwon, Jong Bum (2020). Crime seen: Racial terror and the technologies of Black life and death. American Ethnologist, 47(2), 128-138.
• Peša, Iva. (2020). Between waste and profit: Environmental values on the Central African Copperbelt. The Extractive Industries and Society. Early proof.
• Reno, Joshua. (2020). Engineering Military Rubbish: The Ethics of Waste in and around a Lockheed Martin Facility in New York State. Ethnos, 1-23.
• Roy, Elodie A. (2020). ‘Total trash’. Recorded music and the logic of waste. Popular Music, 39(1), 88-107.
• Saraç-Lesavre, Başak. (2019). Desire for the ‘worst’: Extending nuclear attachments in southeastern New Mexico. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 0263775819889969.
• Sen, Somdeep. (2020). Antagonistic landscapes. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 2399654420948529.
• Shadaan, Reena., & Murphy, Michelle. (2020). EDCs as Industrial Chemicals and Settler Colonial Structures. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 6(1).
• Shapiro, Nicholas, Zakariya, Nasser, & Roberts, Jody A. (2020). Beyond the data treadmill: Environmental enumeration, justice, and apprehension. In Toxic truths. Manchester University Press.
• Shell, Hanna Rose. Shoddy: From Devil’s Dust to the Renaissance of Rags. University of Chicago Press, 2020.
• Soto, Ana., & Brilmyer, Gracen. (2020). On Language, Scientific Metaphor, and Endocrine Disruption: An Interview with Feminist Scientist Ana Soto. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 6(1).
• Spackman, Christy. (2020). Just noticeable: erasing place in municipal water treatment in the US during the interwar period. Journal of Historical Geography, 67, 2-13
• Spackman, Christy. (2020). In smell’s shadow: Materials and politics at the edge of perception. Social Studies of Science, 0306312720918946.
• Souchen, Alex. (2020). War Junk: Munitions Disposal and Postwar Reconstruction in Canada. UBC Press.
• Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Sophia. C. (2020). Failure to build: Sewage and the choppy temporality of infrastructure in Palestine. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2514848620908193.
• Strasser, Bruno J., and Thomas Schlich. (2020). Ahistory of the medical mask and the rise of throwaway culture. The Lancet (2020).
• Straube, Wibke. (2020). ‘Posthuman Ecological Intimacy, Waste, and the Trans Body in Nånting måste gå sönder (2014).’ In: Douglas Vakoch (ed.), Transgender Ecology. Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on Environment and Nature.
• Tessaro, Lara. (2020). Potency and Power Estrogen, Cosmetics, and Labeling in Canadian Regulatory Practices, 1939-1953. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 6(1).
• Truelove, Yaffa., & O’Reilly, Kathleen. (2020). Making India’s cleanest city: Sanitation, intersectionality, and infrastructural violence. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2514848620941521.
• Vaughn, Rachel. (2020). Compost and Menstrual Blood: Women Wastepickers and the Work of Waste Futurity . Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 6(1).
• Verbeek, Thomas., & Mah, Alice. (2020). Integration and Isolation in the Global Petrochemical Industry: A Multiscalar Corporate Network Analysis. Economic Geography, 1-24.
• Zubiaurre, María Teresa (2019). Talking Trash: Cultural Uses of Waste. Vanderbilt University Press.

Dissertations & Theses

• Akese, Grace A. (2019). Electronic waste (e-waste) science and advocacy at Agbogbloshie: the making and effects of “The world’s largest e-waste dump,” (Doctoral dissertation, Memorial University of Newfoundland).
• Nguyen, Alisa. (2020) Ocean Plastics: How marine litter shapes the lives of residents of Cu Lao Cham Marine Protected Area, Vietnam. (MA Thesis, University of Guelph).
• Singer, Gideon. A. (2020). An Applied Anthropology of Electronic Waste in Central Australia (Doctoral dissertation, Purdue University Graduate School).

Book Reviews

• Garbage Citizenship: Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dakar, Senegal by Rosalind Fredericks. Review by Marion Ernwein
• Talking Trash: Cultural Uses of Waste by María Teresa Zubiaurre. Review by Samuel Amago
• Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine by Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins. Review by Basma Fahoum

Calls for Proposals & Participation

• Call for abstracts. Discard Studies Twitter Conference. Deadline: Oct 16, 2020.
• Call for chapters. Disturbed ecologies: geopolitics and the northern landscape in the era of environmental crisis. Deadline: 16 October 2020.
• Call for articles. Special Issue, Environmental Justice: Environmental justice and the challenge of Black Lives Matter. Deadline: 31 January 2021
• Call for chapters. Routledge Handbook of Digital Environmental Humanities. Deadline: 1 January 2021
• Call for papers. Waste management and research: Healthcare waste and COVID-19- Open access supplement. Deadline: 31 October 2020.
• Call for papers. Special Issue, Sustainability: Understanding the Society-Environmental Policy-Practice Nexus and its Implications for Sustainability Transformations Under Uncertain Futures. Deadline: 31 March 2021
• Call for proposals. Antipode Foundation: A Right to the Discipline awards. Deadline: 28 February 2021

Conferences & Symposia

• COVID-19 Waste Colloquium, monthly meeting beginning November 2020
• Splitting the Atom, exhibition 18 September- 25 October 2020, Vilnius, Lithuania

Audio Visual

• ‘You have to take action’: one hospital cleaner’s journey through the pandemic. The Guardian podcast
• Rummage- Waste. Thinking Allowed, BBC Radio 4.
• The fishy fight against Mi’kmaq rights. Media Indigena
• Where do we go from here? 99% Invisible podcast

Positions

• Assistant Professor, Science, Technology and Society Studies, University of Alberta
• Associate Lecturer, Geography. University of Exeter
• Co-Executive Director, The Post-Landfill Action Network (PLAN) USA
• Departmental Lecturer in Human Geography, Oxford University
• Department Lecturer in Human Geography, Oxford University
• Environmental sociologist, University of Texas at El-Paso
• Faculty member in Climate Change and Sustainable Development, National Taiwan University
• PhD position- Sustainable and household consumption in Norway, University of Oslo
• Senior/Principal Research Fellow, Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, University of Queensland

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 and Europe.

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