The Dirt

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 February 2022.

Recent Discard Studies Posts

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. According to the Summers Gender Balance Assessment Tool, the bibliography for The Dirt in January 2022 is approximately 37.03% percent women-authored.

  • Alexander, Chloe, and Anna Stanley. 2021. “The Colonialism of Carbon Capture and Storage in Alberta’s Tar Sands.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, December, 25148486211052876. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486211052875.
  • Amenta, Libera, Michelangelo Russo, and Arjan van Timmeren, eds. 2022. Regenerative Territories: Dimensions of Circularity for Healthy Metabolisms. Vol. 128. GeoJournal Library. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78536-9.
  • Babbitt, Callie W, Roni A Neff, Brian E Roe, Sauleh Siddiqui, Celeste Chavis, and Thomas A Trabold. 2022. “Transforming Wasted Food Will Require Systemic and Sustainable Infrastructure Innovations.” Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 54 (February): 101151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2022.101151.
  • Bonneuil, Christophe, Pierre-Louis Choquet, and Benjamin Franta. 2021. “Early Warnings and Emerging Accountability: Total’s Responses to Global Warming, 1971–2021.” Global Environmental Change, October, 102386. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102386.
  • Cattaneo, Claudio, Giorgos Kallis, Federico Demaria, Christos Zografos, Filka Sekulova, Giacomo D’Alisa, Angelos Varvarousis, and Marta Conde. 2022. “A Degrowth Approach to Urban Mobility Options: Just, Desirable and Practical Options.” Local Environment 0 (0): 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2022.2025769.
  • Centemeri, Laura, Sezin Topçu, and J. Peter Burgess. 2021. Rethinking Post-Disaster Recovery: Socio-Anthropological Perspectives on Repairing Environments. Routledge.
  • Dávila, Mariana Ivette López. 2021. “Behavioral Insights into Personal Electronics Repair.” Lund Sweden: Lund University. https://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=9062329&fileOId=9074620.
  • Davis, Heather M. 2022. Plastic Matter. Elements. Durham: Duke University Press.
  • Dubro, Alec. 2021. “Scraping the Bottom of the Sea.” Indigenous Policy Journal 32 (2). http://articles.indigenouspolicy.org/index.php/ipj/article/view/797.
  • Gambi, Cristina, Miquel Canals, Cinzia Corinaldesi, Antonio Dell’Anno, Elisabetta Manea, Antonio Pusceddu, Anna Sanchez-Vidal, and Roberto Danovaro. 2022. “Impact of Resuspended Mine Tailings on Benthic Biodiversity and Ecosystem Processes: The Case Study of Portmán Bay, Western Mediterranean Sea, Spain.” Environmental Pollution 301 (May): 119021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2022.119021.
  • Gille, Zsuzsa, and Josh Lepawsky. 2022. The Routledge Handbook of Waste Studies. Taylor & Francis Group.
  • Habib, Hina, Michelle Wagner, Cornelis Peter Baldé, Lucía Herreras Martínez, Jaco Huisman, and Jo Dewulf. 2022. “What Gets Measured Gets Managed – Does It? Uncovering the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Flows in the European Union.” Resources, Conservation and Recycling 181 (June): 106222. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2022.106222.
  • Hickel, Jason, Christian Dorninger, Hanspeter Wieland, and Intan Suwandi. 2022. “Imperialist Appropriation in the World Economy: Drain from the Global South through Unequal Exchange, 1990–2015.” Global Environmental Change 73 (March): 102467. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102467.
  • Jokela-Pansini, Maaret, and Elisabeth Militz. 2022. “Breathing New Futures in Polluted Environments (Taranto, Italy).” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers n/a (n/a). https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12532.
  • Lau, Justin Chun-Him. 2022. “Towards a Care Perspective on Waste: A New Direction in Discard Studies.” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, January, 23996544211063384. https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544211063383.
  • Lejeune, Tristan. 2022. “Formidable Legal Bar Shields Military from PFAS Lawsuits.” Text. TheHill. January 27, 2022. https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/590643-formidable-legal-bar-shields-military-from-pfas-lawsuits.
  • M. Wagner, C.P. Baldé, V. Luda, I.C. Nnorom, R. Kuehr, and G. Iattoni. 2022. “Regional E-Waste Monitor for Latin-America, Results for the 13 Coutnries Participating in Project UNIDO-GEF 5554.” United Nations University. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Innocent-Nnorom/publication/358397668_REM_LATAM_2022_ENG_Final/links/620038011674b45977cb3dc8/REM-LATAM-2022-ENG-Final.pdf.
  • Manglou, M., L. Rocher, and J.-B. Bahers. 2022. “Waste Colonialism and Metabolic Flows in Island Territories.” Journal of Political Ecology 29 (1): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.2458/JPE.2836.
  • Manieson, L.A., and T. Ferrero-Regis. 2022. “Castoff from the West, Pearls in Kantamanto?: A Critique of Second-Hand Clothes Trade.” Journal of Industrial Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.13238.
  • Modoi, Oana-Cristina, and Florin-Constantin Mihai. 2022. “E-Waste and End-of-Life Vehicles Management and Circular Economy Initiatives in Romania.” Energies 15 (3): 1120. https://doi.org/10.3390/en15031120.
  • Morrison, Susan S. 2021. “Waste.” In The Cambridge Companion to Environmental Humanities, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Stephanie Foote, 229–42.
  • Neville, Kate J, and Sarah J Martin. 2022. “Slow Justice: A Framework for Tracing Diffusion and Legacies of Resistance.” Social Movement Studies 0 (0): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2022.2031955.
  • Ntapanta, Samwel Moses. 2021. “‘Lifescaping’ Toxicants: Locating and Living with e-Waste in Tanzania.” Anthropology Today 37 (4): 7–10. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12663.
  • Rehamn, Ateeq Ur, Jonah Mack, and Parvez Alam. 2021. “From E-Waste to Robots: A Case Study on e-Waste Upcycling in Low-to-Middle Income Countries.” In 2021 IEEE International Humanitarian Technology Conference (IHTC), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1109/IHTC53077.2021.9698905.
  • Rice, Carla M., Chelsea Temple Jones, and Ingrid Mündel. 2022. “Slow Story-Making in Urgent Times.” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, February. https://doi.org/10.1177/15327086211072230.
  • Samarakoon, Shanil, Paul Munro, Collen Zalengera, and Matthew Kearnes. 2022. “The Afterlives of Off-Grid Solar: The Dynamics of Repair and e-Waste in Malawi.” Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 42 (March): 317–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2022.01.009.
  • Taffel, Sy. 2022. “AirPods and the Earth: Digital Technologies, Planned Obsolescence and the Capitalocene.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, January, 25148486221076136. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221076136.
  • Tian, Tingting, Guangfu Liu, Hussein Yasemi, and Yang Liu. 2022. “Managing E-Waste from a Closed-Loop Lifecycle Perspective: China’s Challenges and Fund Policy Redesign.” Environmental Science and Pollution Research, February. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19227-6.
  • Veelen, Bregje van, and Jacob Hasselbalch. 2020. “Power and Politics in Plastics Research: A Critique of ‘Whither Plastics.’” Energy Research & Social Science 61 (March): 101445. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101445.
  • Voyles, Traci Brynne. 2021. The Settler Sea: California’s Salton Sea and the Consequences of Colonialism. U of Nebraska Press.
  • Walby, Kevin, and Ben Davis. 2022. “Tailings and Tracings: Using Art and Social Science to Explore the Limits of Visual Methods at Mining and Industrial Ruins.” Visual Communication, February, 147035722110711. https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572211071117.
  • Wang, Zhanyun, Sam Adu-Kumi, Miriam L. Diamond, Ramon Guardans, Tom Harner, Agustín Harte, Natsuko Kajiwara, et al. 2022. “Enhancing Scientific Support for the Stockholm Convention’s Implementation: An Analysis of Policy Needs for Scientific Evidence.” Environmental Science & Technology, February. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c06120.
  • Webber, Sophie, Sara Nelson, Nate Millington, Gareth Bryant, and Patrick Bigger. 2022. “Financing Reparative Climate Infrastructures: Capital Switching, Repair, and Decommodification.” Antipode n/a (n/a). https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12806.
  • Zappitelli, Joseph, Elijah Smith, Kevin Padgett, Melissa M. Bilec, Callie W. Babbitt, and Vikas Khanna. 2021. “Quantifying Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Embodied in Global Primary Plastic Trade Network.” ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering 9 (44): 14927–36. https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.1c05236.

Audio/Visual/Mixed Media

Calls for Papers/Proposals/Submissions

Conferences & Symposia

Positions

New Patrons

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

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