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 March 2022.
Recent Discard Studies Posts
- Sorting It Out: Sustainability in Higher Education by Kathy Zhang
- Acts of Occlusion by Korede Akinkunmi
- Discard Studies Staffing Changes
- Copyright on the Farm by MC Forelle
- Reading Lists: Residential Schools
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 March 2022 is approximately 27.43% percent women-authored.
- Aggeri, Franck. 2021. From Waste to Urban Mines: A Historical Perspective on the Circular Economy. Field Action Science Reports, p10-13.
- Capello, Elias. 2021. Trans and White Trash: An Ethnography of Trans People in the Deep South. Anthropology and Humanism, November.
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Carenzo, Sebastian, Paula Juarez, and Lucas Becerra. 2022. Is There Room for a Circular Economy “From Below”? Reflections on Privatisation and Commoning of Circular Waste Loops in Argentina. Local Environment, March 22. Keywords: circular economy, commoning, grassroots, informality
- Cobb, Charles. 2022. Landscapes of Forgetting and Structural Silence in the American Southeast. American Anthropologist 124(1):90-103. Keywords: landscapes, social forgetting, platform mounds, plazas, Mississippian
- Dharia, Namita Vijay. 2021. Embodied Urbanisms: Corruption and the Ecologies of Eating and Excreting in India’s Real Estate Economies. Cultural Anthropology 36(4):708-732.
- Evans, David, Peter Jackson, Monica Truninger, and João A. Baptista. 2022 The Ontological Politics of Freshness: Qualities of Food and Sustainability Governance. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 54(3):461-476. Keywords: Actor-network theory, economy of qualities, market studies, plastic packaging, sustainable food
- Fawaz, Mona, Carla Al-Hage, and Mona Harb. 2022. Unplanned Links, Unanticipated Outcomes: Urban Refugees in Halba (Lebanon). Environment and Planning D: Space and Society, February. Keywords: Housing urban refugees, forced displacement, space, informality, Middle-East.
- Gaber, Nadia. 2021. Blue Lines and Blue Infrastructures: Notes on Water, Race, and Space. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 39(6):1073-1091. Keywords: urban anthropology, Detroit, water, infrastructure, materiality, redlining
- Garnett, Emma, Angeliki Balayannis, Steve Hinchliffe, Thom Davies, Toni Gladding, and Phillip Nicholson. 2022. The Work of Waste During COVID-19: Logics of Public, Environmental, and Occupational Health. Critical Public Health, 1-11. Keywords: Waste, occupational health, environmental health, logics of health
- Giordano, Claudia, and Silvio Franco. Giordano, Claudia, and Silvio Franco. 2021. Household Food Waste from an International Perspective. Sustainability 13(9):5122.
- Heidenstrøm, Nina. 2022. The Utility of Social Practice Theory in Risk Research. Journal of Risk Research 25(2):236-251. Keywords: social practice theory, social science risk research, risk and everyday life, routines, materiality
- Hussain, Chaudhery, Sunpreet Singh, and Lalit Goswami, eds. 2021. Waste-to-Energy Approaches Towards Zero Waste. Elsevier.
- Hussain, Chaudhery and Subrata Hait, eds. 2022. Advanced Organic Waste Management: Sustainable Practices and Approaches. Elsevier.
- Kalina, Marc, Jonathan Kwangulero, and Elizabeth Tilley. 2022. “We Are from There, That’s Our Land”: Contestation, Maize, and the Problemisation of Waste at Blantyre, Malawi’s Mzedi Dumpsite. Local Environment March 7. Keywords: Africa, agriculture, land, dumpsite
- Kelman, Ilan, ed. 2022. Antarcticness: Inspirations and Imaginaries. UCL Press.
- Manzano Gómez, Noel. 2022. The Cleanliness of Otherness: Epidemics, Informal Urbanization and Urban Degeneration in Early Twentieth-Century Madrid. Planning Perspectives 37(1):127-147. Keywords: shantytown, informal urbanization, stigmatization, epidemics, degeneration, slum clearance, representations, imaginaries, racism
- Morimoto, Ryo. 2022. A Wild Boar Chase: Ecology of Harm and Half-Life Politics in Coastal Fukushima. Cultural Anthropology 37(1):69-98.
- Randle, Sayd. 2021. Battling Over Bathwater: Greywater Technopolitics in Los Angeles. City & Society 33(3):444-466.
- Randle, Sayd. 2021. Ecosystem Duties, Green Infrastructure, and Environmental Injustice in Los Angeles. American Anthropologist 124(1):77-89.
- Yadav, Deepak , Pradeep Kumar, Pardeep Singh, and Daniel Vallero, eds. 2021. Hazardous Waste Management: An Overview of Advanced and Cost-Effective Solutions. Elsevier.
- Zamfirescu, Irina, and Liviu Chelcea. 2021. Evictions as Infrastructural Events. Urban Geography 42(9):1270-1291.
Reviews
- Basura: Cultures of Waste in Contemporary Spain; Samuel Amago, University of Virginia Press, 2021 // Reviewed by Kathleen Kole de Peralta
- Cultivating Nature: The Conservation of a Valencian Working Landscape; Sarah R. Hamilton, University of Washington Press, 2018 // Reviewed by Antonio Ortega Santos
- Fresh Kills: A History of Consuming and Discarding in New York City; Martin Melosi, Columbia University Press, 2020 // Reviewed by Stephen Conn
- Disposing of Modernity: The Archaeology of Garbage and Consumerism during Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair; Rebecca S. Graff, University Press of Florida, 2020 // Reviewed by Mark P. Leone.
- Wastelands: Recycled Commodities and the Perpetual Displacement of Ashkali and Romani Scavengers; Eirik Saethre, University of California Press, 2020 // Reviewed by Michele Filippo Frontefrancesco
Special Issues
- Industry and Waste: Toward a Circular Economy. Veolia Institute, 2021.
- The Administrative State in the 21st Century. Daedalus 150(3) — Summer 2021
Calls for Papers/Proposals/Submissions
- Unsettling Landscapes: American Anthropological Association Annual Conference, Seattle, WA, 9-13 November; deadline 30 March
- Biennial Conference of the International Water History Association Hybrid Conference, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, 29 June-1 July; deadline 31 March
- Transformation, Hope and the Commons: European Association of Social Anthropologists Conference 2022, Queens University, Belfast, 26-29 July; deadline 31 March
- Special Series on Water and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, UCL Open: Environment; deadline April
- Digital Ecologies in Practice, Bonn, Germany; 28-29 July; deadline 15 April
- Chernobyl as a Historical Caesura: Environment, Politics, and Science, University of Naples Federico II, 9-10 December; deadline 15 April
- Animals in the American Popular Imagination Virtual Conference, 12-16 September; Austrian Association for Cultural Studies, Cultural History, and Popular Culture; deadline 24 April
- Call for Input on the Impact of Toxics on Indigenous Peoples, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights; deadline 25 April
- Integrated Social-Ecological-Infrastructural Management for Urban Resilience — special issue of Resources, Conservation & Recycling; deadline 30 June
Conferences & Symposia
- Critical UX: Lifting the Curtain on Ethical Theater
- Automated Fields & Rides: The Future of Technical Systems Designed for Worker Well-being & Agency; 8 April
- Traditional Ecological Knowledge National Virtual Summit, Oregon State University, 10-12 May
- Undoing the Crisis | York University Graduate STS Conference; 3 June
- European Society for Environmental History Conference, Bristol, UK; 4-8 July
Positions
- Post-doc | Indigenous Politics | University of Toronto | Review beings 1 April
- The Dept. of Sociology at Queen’s University is seeking to fill a tenure-track position in Digital Justice starting July 1, 2022. Preferred areas of scholarship and teaching are environmental justice, racial justice, and immigration/migration. PhD in Sociology or cognate discipline is required. Application deadline: 31 March, 2022. More details here.
- Princeton University — High Meadows Environmental Institute: Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Visiting Professor in the Environment and Humanities.
- Permanent Research Fellow | Interdisciplinary Social Sciences for Sustainability | Anglia Ruskin | deadline 28 March
- Research Assistants — part-time; must be Inuit from or in Nunavut; College North by North Research Program, Newfoundland
New Patrons
Discard Studies is funded, in part, by the generous patronage of our readers, via Patreon. New patrons include:
- Shosha Capps. Thank you!
- MYGray. Thank you!
- Lily Baum Pollans. Thank you!
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