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 April, 2021.

Recent Discard Studies Posts

• Waste and Recycling in Cold War Eastern Europe: The Case of the “Bee” Waste Collection Trust in Hungary by Viktor Pál
• Taboos around menstruation are leading to a growing environmental crisis in India by Mariana Lopez
• On Wishcycling by Rebecca Altman
• Firsting in Research by Max Liboiron

Peer-reviewed 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 about 30.4% percent women-authored based on the Summers Gender Balance Assessment Tool. This is our lowest rate yet.

• Behrsin, Ingrid, Knuth, Sarah, & Levenda, Anthony. (2021). Thirty states of renewability: Controversial energies and the politics of incumbent industry. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 25148486211006340. Key words: Renewable energy transitions, US Renewable Portfolio Standards, politics of classification, industrial political ecology
• Burgman, Linus Ekman, & Wallsten, Björn. (2021). Should the Sludge Hit the Farm?–How Chemo-Social Relations Affect Policy Efforts to Circulate Phosphorus in Sweden. Sustainable Production and Consumption, 27, 1488-1497. Keywords: Sewage sludge; Policy; Chemo-social relations; Circular economy; Phosphorus
• Denis, Jérôme, and David Pontille. (2020). Maintenance epistemology and public order: Removing graffiti in Paris. Social Studies of Science, 0306312720956720. Keywords: maintenance, graffiti, city, material ecology, neglected work, urban order
• Folkers, Cynthia. (2021). Disproportionate Impacts of Radiation Exposure on Women, Children, and Pregnancy: Taking Back our Narrative. Journal of the History of Biology, 1-36.
• Göbel, Hanna Katharina. (2021). Making Cultural Values out of Urban Ruins: Re-enactments of Atmospheres. Space and Culture, 1206331221997696. Keywords: performative aesthetics, urban ruins, practice theory, cultural activism, affective atmospheres
• Gregson, Nicky, and Pete Foreman. (2021). England’s municipal waste regime: challenges and prospects. The geographical journal. https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12386
• Grüneisl, Katharina. (2020). Second-hand shoe circulations in Tunis. Processes of valuation and the production of urban space. Articulo-Journal of Urban Research, (21). Keywords: Second-hand; valuation; commodity circulation; urban change; Tunis
• Hatakeyama, Sumiko. (2021). Let Chromosomes Speak: The Cytogenetics Project at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC). Journal of the History of Biology, 1-20.
• Holmberg, Tora, and Malin Ideland. (2021). The circular economy of food waste: Transforming waste to energy through ‘make-up’ work. Journal of Material Culture. https://doi.org/10.1177/13591835211002555. Keywords: biogas, circular economy, food waste, make-up work, Sweden, waste regime
• Kohler, Pia. (2020). Science Advice and Global Environmental Governance: Expert Institutions and the Implementation of International Environmental Treaties. Anthem Press.
• Lee, Thomas, and Rachael Wakefield-Rann. (2021). Conspicuous and inconspicuous repair: A framework for situating repair in relation to consumer practices and design research. Journal of Cleaner Production, 294, 126310. Keywords: Design and repair, Sociology of consumption, Sustainable production and consumption, Practice theory
• Mitchell, M. X. (2021). The Cosmology of Evidence: Suffering, Science, and Biological Witness After Three Mile Island. Journal of the History of Biology, 1-23.
• Saito, Hiro. (2021). The Sacred and Profane of Japan’s Nuclear Safety Myth: On the Cultural Logic of Framing and Overflowing. Cultural Sociology, 17499755211001046. Keywords: cosmology, Fukushima, science and technology studies, sociotechnical imaginary, strong program
• Zimring, Carl A., and Steven H. Corey. (2021).Coastal Metropolis: Environmental Histories of Modern New York City. University of Pittsburgh Press

Theses and Dissertations

• Landia, Niva. (2021). “MATERIA INSTABILE: UNA LETTURA ANTROPOLOGICA DEI RIFIUTI AI TEMPI DELL’ANTROPOCENE/Unstable matter: an anthropological reading of waste at the time of the Anthropocene.” (Thesis, Universita Degli Studi Di Milano-Biocca).

Audio/Visual

• COVID Calls #256: A Return to Cancer Alley and the Pandemic
• Trash in (post-)Communist Eastern Europe, SRB podcast
• Juned Shaikh, “Outcaste Bombay: City Making and the Politics of the Poor” (U Washington Press, 2021), Asian Studies podcast
• #ClothesBusters​ Webinar One: Sustainable Spring Cleaning, seminar recording

Reviews

• Book Review: Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness by Joshua O. Reno

Calls for Proposals & Participation

• Call for chapters: Difficult Death: Challenging Cultural Representations of Death, Dying and the Dead in Media and Culture, Abstracts due May 1st, 2021
  
• Alternatives to the Anthropocene, Radical History Review, Deadline June 1, 2021
• Call for Participants: Pandemic Methodologies Twitter Conference, Deadline May 7, 2021

Conferences & Symposia

• Intimate Toxicities, 2021 MaGrann Conference, Rutgers University, 6-7 May, online
• Re-opening the bin – Waste, economy, culture and society, University of Gothenburg, June 10-12. Online.
• Sixth Biennial Conference of East Asian Environmental History on theme Human and Nature in East Asia: Exploring New Directions in Environmental History, September 7-10 (Tuesday-Friday), 2021. Online.
• STREAMS – Transformative Environmental Humanities, 3–7 August 2021. Online.

Positions

• Doctoral Award on Indigenous arts and Environmental Justice, University of Kent, Canterbury, Closing date: Friday 7th May 2021
• Assistant Professor in Radical Black Ecologies, Dept of Geography and Planning, Queen’s University, closing date: May 15 2021
• Professor of Racial Justice in Science and Technology Policy — University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Deadline: July 1, 2021
• Two post-doc positions, history of epidemiological reasoning in 20th C – University of Edinburgh. Deadline: May 7, 2021

If you have an item to add to The Dirt, please contact editors@discardstudies.com. 

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