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. Here is The Dirt for December 2020.

Recent Discard Studies Posts

• Nigeria’s COVID-19 waste management policy should include the informal sector Repost by Chidi Nzeadibe and Adaeze Ejike-Alieji
• There’s no such thing as “We” by Max Liboiron
• How to Twitter Conference (#Discard2020)

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 is 44.72% percent women authors, based on Dr. Jane Summer’s  Gender Balance Assessment Tool.

• Aldred, Terri-Leigh., Alderfer‐Mumma, Charis., de Leeuw, Sarah., Farrales, May., Greenwood, Margo., Hoogeveen, Dawn., O’Toole, Ryan., Parkes, Margot W., & Sloan Morgan, Vanessa. (2020). Mining sick: Creatively unsettling normative narratives about industry, environment, extraction, and the health geographies of rural, remote, northern, and Indigenous communities in British Columbia. The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien.
• Aronowsky, Leah. (2021). Gas Guzzling Gaia, or: A Prehistory of Climate Change Denialism. Critical Inquiry 47(2).
• Barry, Andrew. (2020). What Is an Environmental Problem?. Theory, Culture & Society, 0263276420958043.
• Dewan, Camelia. (2020). Living with toxic development: Shipbreaking in the industrializing zone of Sitakunda, Bangladesh. Anthropology Today, 36(6), 9-12.
• Fan, Mei-Fang., Chiu, Chih-Ming., & Mabon, Leslie. (2020). Environmental justice and the politics of pollution: The case of the Formosa Ha Tinh Steel pollution incident in Vietnam. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2514848620973164.
• Flowers, Catherine Coleman. (2020). Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret. The New Press.
• Furnaro, Andrea. (2020). Neoliberal energy transitions: the renewable energy boom in the Chilean mining economy. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 3(4), 951-975.
• Havlick, David. G., & Biermann, Christine. (2020). Wild, Native, or Pure: Trout as Genetic Bodies. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 0162243920978307.
• Holmes, Helen., & Ehgartner, Ulrike. (2020). Lost Property and the Materiality of Absence. Cultural Sociology, 1749975520969007.
• Jarrige, François & Le Roux, Thomas (2020). The Contamination of the Earth: A History of Pollutions in the Industrial Age. Translated by Janice Egan and Michael Egan. MIT Press.
• Mabele, Mathew Bukhi. (2019). In pursuit of multidimensional justice: Lessons from a charcoal ‘greening’project in Tanzania. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2514848619876544.
• Mattern, Shannon (2020). Purity and Security: Towards A Cultural History of Plexiglass. Places Journal, December 20.
• Mercelis, Joris (2020). Beyond Bakelite: Leo Baekeland and the Business of Science and Invention. MIT Press.
• Potter, Emily., Miller, Fiona., Lövbrand, Eva., Houston, Donna., McLean, Jessica., O’Gorman, Emily., Evers, Clifton, & Ziervogel, Gina. (2020). A manifesto for shadow places: Re-imagining and co-producing connections for justice in an era of climate change. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2514848620977022.
• Ramakrishnan, Kavita., O’Reilly, Kathleen., & Budds, Jessica. (2020). Between decay and repair: Embodied experiences of infrastructure’s materiality. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2514848620980597.
• Saraf, Ishani. (2020). “We Too Have Blackened Our Hands”: Work, Harm, and Legitimacy in a Delhi Scrap Market. Anthropology of Work Review, 41(2), 119-128.
• Singer, Gideon. (2020). Digital Garbology. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology.
• Snake-Beings, Emit. (2020). The Liquid Midden: A Video Ethnography of Urban Discard in Boeng Trabaek Channel, Cambodia. Visual Anthropology, 33(5), 397-411.
• Wideman, Trevor. J. (2020). Property, waste, and the “unnecessary hardship” of land use planning in Winnipeg, Canada. Urban Geography, 41(6), 865-892.
• Would, Alice. (2020). Tactile Taxidermy: The Revival of Animal Skins in the Early Twentieth Century Museum. Environment and History.
• Voyles, Traci Brynne. (2020). Toxic Masculinity: California’s Salton Sea and the Environmental Consequences of Manliness. Environmental History.

Book Reviews

• The Wild and the Toxic: American Environmentalism and the Politics of Health By Jennifer Thomson, Review by Elizabeth Blum
• Science and the Environment in Chile. The Politics of Expert Advice in a Neoliberal Democracy, by Javiera Barandiarán, Review by Mara Dicenta

Calls for Proposals & Participation

• After Progress, digital exhibition. Proposals due 18 January 2021
• Bodies and Politics, Call for contributions, Special issue of you are here: journal of creative geography. Due 12 January 2021.
• Mullins Prize for Best Student Paper, Society for Social Studies of Science (4S). Nominations due 30 December 2020.
• Toxics, Call for contributions, special issue of Aggregate, due 15 January 2021
• Ongoing: COVID-19 Waste Colloquium 
• Open panels, call for contributions, 4S Annual Meeting

Audio Visual

Positions

• Department Chair, Social Sciences, Michigan Tech
• The Global Asian Studies Program “Bridge to the Faculty” Postdoctoral Fellowship in Critical Refugee Studies, The University of Illinois at Chicago
• PhD position, Multispecies justice, University of Sydney
• PhD position, Voices from Bushfire-Affected Communities, University of Sydney
• Asbestos in Canada: Graduate Study Opportunities, Memorial University
• Tenure stream Assistant Professor position in Race and Inequality in Black Communities in the United States (Department of Africana Studies) at the University of Pittsburgh
• Assistant/Associate professor, Native American Community Health, School of Social Welfare at UC Berkeley
• Postdoc position in Housing and Urban Sociology, University of Uppsala
• Assistant Professor Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University
• Assistant Professor Women’s and Gender Studies (Critical Disability Studies), Carleton University

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.

Support Discard Studies by becoming a Patreon subscriber.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.