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 July 2021.

Recent Discard Studies Posts

• Copyright on the Farm by MC Forelle
• Reading Lists: Residential Schools
• Miss Tampon Liberty by Camilla Mørk Røstvik
• Reading Lists: Waste Colonialism and Palestine
• A Moral Politics of Blame by Sneha Sharma
• Waste and Recycling in Cold War Eastern Europe: The Case of the “Bee” Waste Collection Trust in Hungary by Viktor Pál

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 43.8% percent women-authored based on the Summers Gender Balance Assessment Tool.

• Altman, Rebecca. “The Myth of Historical Bio-Based Plastics.” Science 373, no. 6550 (July 2, 2021): 47–49. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abj1003.
• Armiero, Marco. (2021). The Case for the Wasteocene. Environmental History, 26(3), 425-430.
• Batres, Maya, Frances M. Wang, Holly Buck, Rudra Kapila, Ugbaad Kosar, Rachel Licker, Deepika Nagabhushan, Ester Rekhelman, and Vanessa Suarez. “Environmental and Climate Justice and Technological Carbon Removal.” The Electricity Journal 34, no. 7 (August 1, 2021): 107002. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tej.2021.107002. Keywords: Environmental justice, Carbon dioxide removal, Technological carbon removal, Climate justice, Direct air capture, Negative emissions
• Baumann, Hanna, & Massalha, Massalha. (2021). ‘Your daily reality is rubbish’: Waste as a means of urban exclusion in the suspended spaces of East Jerusalem. Urban Studies, 00420980211018642. Keywords: exclusion, infrastructure, Jerusalem, stigma, waste
• Borowy, Iris. (2021). Making Sense of the History of Toxicity: How Poisonous Pasts May Have Touched Me and Everybody Else. Environmental History, 26(3), 411-424.
• Bercht, Anna Lena, Jonas Hein, and Silja Klepp. “Introduction to the Special Issue ‘Climate and Marine Justice – Debates and Critical Perspectives.’” Geographica Helvetica 76, no. 3 (July 13, 2021): 305–14. https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-76-305-2021.
• Clormann, Michael, & Klimburg-Witjes, Nina. (2021). Troubled Orbits and Earthly Concerns: Space Debris as a Boundary Infrastructure. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 01622439211023554. Keywords: space debris, sustainability, social studies of outer space, boundary infrastructure, co-production
• Coughlin, Maura. (2021). ‘Terres vaines et vagues’: Ecocriticism and Breton Wastelands in Visual and Literary Representation, Nottingham French Studies 60(2): 175-191. Keywords: Painting, Brittany, wastelands, ecocriticism, biodiversity, preservation, enchantment, land ethics, Peinture, Bretagne, landes, écocritique, biodiversité, préservation, enchantement, éthique de la terre
• Eitel, Kathrin. (2021). Oozing Matters: Infracycles of “Waste Management” and Emergent Naturecultures in Phnom Penh. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, 15(2), 135-152.
• Farrelly, Trisia, Sy Taffel, and Ian Shaw, eds. Plastic Legacies: Pollution, Persistence, and Politics. Athabasca University Press, 2021.
• Flood, Lauren. The Sounds of Zombie Media: Waste and the Sustainable Afterlives of Repurposed Technologies. In Audible Infrastructures. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190932633.003.0011
• Göbel, Hanna K. (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
• Grossman, Shelby. The Politics of Order in Informal Markets: How the State Shapes Private Governance. Cambridge University Press, 2021.
• Introduction: Beyond the Production of Ignorance: The Pervasiveness of Industry Influence through the Tools of Chemical Regulation.” Science, Technology, & Human Values
• Kanyama, Annika Carlsson, Jonas Nässén, René Benders. (2021). Shifting Expenditure on Food, Holidays, and Furnishings Could Lower Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Almost 40%. Journal of Industrial Ecology https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.13176.
• Lima, Maria Raquel Passos. (Toxi)City of Steel: Steelmaking Infrastructure and Social Contestation in a Case of Contamination by Industrial Waste. Revista ANTHROPOLÓGICAS 31, no. 2 (2020): 86–121. Keywords: environmental justice, toxic waste, steel industry, infrastructure, time.
• Lamoreaux, Janelle. (2021). Reproducing Toxicity. Environmental History, 26(3), 437-443.
• Mah, Alice. (2021). Ecological crisis, decarbonisation, and degrowth: The dilemmas of just petrochemical transformations. Stato e mercato, Rivista quadrimestrale: 51-78. Keywords: Environment; Labor; Institutions and Growth; Environment and Growth; Energy, Environment; Political Economy, Energy, Environment; Environmental Economics.
• Mart, Michelle. “Why Do We Poison Ourselves?” Environmental History 26, no. 3 (July 1, 2021): 431–36. https://doi.org/10.1093/envhis/emab014.004.
• Mooney, Annabelle. (2021). Dirty or Clean?: Frameworks for Waste. Language and Ecology. Keywords: waste, garbage, linguistics, framing, ecolinguistics.
• Müller, Simone M. (2021). Toxic Commons: Toxic Global Inequality in the Age of the Anthropocene. Environmental History, 26(3), 444-450.
• Nickelsen, Kärin, and David P. D. Munns. Far Beyond the Moon: A History of Life Support Systems in the Space Age. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021.
• Philip, Justine. (2021). When Conservation Turns Violent: Examining New Zealand’s Use of Toxins in Defense of the Environment. Environmental History, 26(3), 451-460.
• Reichle, Ingeborg, ed. Plastic Ocean: Art and Science Responses to Marine Pollution. De Gruyter, 2021. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110744774/html.
• Sattlegger, Lukas. (2021). Negotiating attachments to plastic. Social Studies of Science, 03063127211027950. Keywords: plastic packaging, attachment, actor-network theory, trans-sequential analysis
• Schönbauer, Sarah, & Müller, Ruth. (2021). A Risky Object? How Microplastics Are Represented in the German Media. Science Communication, 10755470211030519. Keywords: microplastics, risk communication, responsibilty, mass media
• Schütz, Tim. “Data Activism and Petro-Public Knowledge ‘Across Borders’ The Formosa Plastics Global Archive.” Platypus. Accessed July 23, 2021.
• Thieme, Tatiana A. (2021). Beyond repair: Staying with breakdown at the interstices. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 02637758211013034. Keywords: Breakdown, fragments, labour, precarious urban environments, ethnographic cross-pollination
• Tu, W. L. (2021). “Invisible” Pollution? Knowledge Gridlock in Regulatory Science on Electronics Toxics. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, 1-27.
• Vaai, Upolu Lumā. “A Dirtified God: A Dirt Theology from the Pacific Dirt Communities.” In Theologies from the Pacific, edited by Jione Havea, 15–29. Postcolonialism and Religions. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74365-9_2.

Special Issues

• TRASH/TREASURE in Labocine
• Of Perpetrators and Victims: Toxicity in Environmental History in Environmental History

Reviews

• The violence and promise of infrastructural discards, a review of Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Sophia, 2019. Waste siege: The life of infrastructure in Palestine. By R. Fredvericks.

Audio/Visual

• Drilled Season 6: Bridge to Nowhere.

Calls for papers/submissions

• ENERGY ETHICS 2021: ENERGY TRANSITIONS & PLANETARY FUTURES. Due 30^th of July
• Defining the Human in Environmental Humanities, Venice International University, June 9-11, 2022. Deadline: Oct 1, 2021

Conferences & Symposia

• 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

• Tenure-Track Faculty Position (Associate Professor), Anti-racism by design, University of Michigan. Deadline: Aug 15
• Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science at Colorado State University
• Senior Lecturer, International Relations, Uni Gloucestershire
• Associate or Full Professor, Sociology & Criminology and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES), University of Denver
• Assistant Professor specializing in the Sociology of Migration, University of British Columbia
• Two Assistant Professor positions (data science; environmental management) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong
• Four x 4yr FT Level C Research Fellow positions at Western Sydney University, different themes

New Patrons

Discard Studies is funded, in part, by the generous patronage of our readers, via Patreon. New patrons include:

• Sarah Surak. Thank you!

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

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