The Dirt

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Discard Studies is an interdisciplinary 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 November 2022.

Special Note: Discard Studies offers a public Zotero library of references collected from The Dirt.

The Zotero library is updated with the publication of each new edition of The Dirt and can be found on the Resources page.

Anyone can access the Zotero library, whether or not they use Zotero software. For those not already familiar with Zotero, it is a free and open-source software. More about Zotero here.

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 November 2022 is approximately 31.82% Women, 53.9% Men, and 14.29% Unknown.

  • Al Mamun, Abdullah, Tofan Agung Eka Prasetya, Indiah Ratna Dewi, and Monsur Ahmad. “Microplastics in Human Food Chains: Food Becoming a Threat to Health Safety.” Science of The Total Environment, October 28, 2022, 159834. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159834.
  • Alkema, Lise M., Caspar J. Van Lissa, Merel Kooi, and Albert A. Koelmans. “Maximizing Realism: Mapping Plastic Particles at the Ocean Surface Using Mixtures of Normal Distributions.” Environmental Science & Technology, October 28, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c03559.
  • Badcock, Jacob. “Photography after Discard Studies: The Case of Agbogbloshie.” Burlington Contemporary Journal, 2022. https://doi.org/10.31452/bcj7.discard.badcock.
  • Ballestero, Andrea, and Yesmar Oyarzun. “Devices: A Location for Feminist Analytics and Praxis.” Feminist Anthropology 3, no. 2 (2022): 227–33. https://doi.org/10.1002/fea2.12108.
  • Barbosa, H., A.M.V.M. Soares, E. Pereira, and R. Freitas. “Lithium: A Review on Concentrations and Impacts in Marine and Coastal Systems.” Science of the Total Environment 857 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159374.
  • Bennett, Nathan J., Juan José Alava, Caroline E. Ferguson, Jessica Blythe, Elisa Morgera, David Boyd, and Isabelle M. Côté. “Environmental (in)Justice in the Anthropocene Ocean.” Marine Policy 147 (January 1, 2023): 105383. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2022.105383.
  • Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette, Soraya Boudia, and Kyoko Sato, eds. Living in a Nuclear World: From Fukushima to Hiroshima. London: Routledge, 2022. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003227472.
  • Blacker, Sarah. “Technologies of Quiescence: Measuring Biodiversity, ‘Intactness,’ and Extractive Industry in Canada.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 8, no. 2 (November 7, 2022). https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v8i2.37828.
  • Braesemann, F., F. Stephany, O. Teutloff, O. Kässi, M. Graham, and V. Lehdonvirta. “The Global Polarisation of Remote Work.” PloS One 17, no. 10 (2022): e0274630. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274630.
  • Chang, Chun-Tuan, Hsiao-Ching Lee, and Yu-Kang Lee. “Are Consumers Moved by a Crying Tree Or a Smiling Forest?: Effects of Anthropomorphic Valence And Cause Acuteness in Green Advertising.” Journal of Advertising Research, November 1, 2022. https://doi.org/10.2501/JAR-2022-024.
  • Chen, Wei-Chieh Jarita. “Land Is Life: Settler Colonial Governance of National Parks and Hunting in Taiwan.” Macalester College, 2022. https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=envi_honors.
  • Côté-Boucher, Karine, Luna Vives, and Louis-Philippe Jannard. “Chronicle of a ‘Crisis’ Foretold: Asylum Seekers and the Case of Roxham Road on the Canada-US Border.” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, November 15, 2022, 23996544221127616. https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544221127614.
  • Cusworth, George, Jeremy Brice, Jamie Lorimer, and Tara Garnett. “When You Wish upon a (GWP) Star: Environmental Governance and the Reflexive Performativity of Global Warming Metrics.” Social Studies of Science, November 15, 2022, 03063127221134275. https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127221134275.
  • Daugbjerg, Mads. “Invasive Materialities: War Bunkers as Disturbing Nodes of Collaboration.” Journal of Material Culture, November 16, 2022, 13591835221136808. https://doi.org/10.1177/13591835221136807.
  • De, Indranil, and Ila Patel. “Mapping Stakeholders and Identifying Institutional Challenges and Opportunities for Waste Management in Towns of Uttar Pradesh, India.” Environmental Policy and Governance n/a, no. n/a. Accessed November 25, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.2037.
  • Dey, Tridibesh, Leonardo Trasande, Rebecca Altman, Zhanyun Wang, Anja Krieger, Melanie Bergmann, Deonie Allen, et al. “Global Plastic Treaty Should Address Chemicals.” Science 378, no. 6622 (November 25, 2022): 841–42. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adf5410.
  • Diana, Zoie, Kelly Reilly, Rachel Karasik, Tibor Vegh, Yifan Wang, Zoe Wong, Lauren Dunn, et al. “Voluntary Commitments Made by the World’s Largest Companies Focus on Recycling and Packaging over Other Actions to Address the Plastics Crisis.” One Earth 5, no. 11 (November 18, 2022): 1286–1306. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2022.10.008.
  • Ferracina, Simone. Ecologies of Inception: Design Potentials on a Warming Planet. London: Routledge, 2022. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003015444.
  • Frond, Hannah De, Win Cowger, Violet Renick, Susanne Brander, Sebastian Primpke, Suja Sukumaran, Dounia Elkhatib, et al. “What Determines Accuracy of Chemical Identification When Using Microspectroscopy for the Analysis of Microplastics?” Chemosphere, November 19, 2022, 137300. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2022.137300.
  • Fullerton, D., C.W. Babbitt, M.M. Bilec, S. He, C. Isenhour, V. Khanna, E. Lee, and T.L. Theis. “Introducing the Circular Economy to Economists.” Annual Review of Resource Economics 14 (2022): 493–514. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-resource-101321-053659.
  • Graziano, Valeria, and Kim Trogal. “Labor Power in the Repair Shop: Circuits of Repair Between Solidarity and Poor Economy.” Capitalism Nature Socialism 0, no. 0 (November 7, 2022): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2022.2140065.
  • Harris-Perry, Melissa. “The Takeaway | Plastic Recycling Is a Dumpster Fire.” Accessed November 16, 2022. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/plastic-recycling-dumpster-fire.
  • Holmberg, Tora, and Malin Ideland. “The (in)Visibility of Sewage Management and Problematization as Strategy for Public Awareness.” The Sociological Review, November 21, 2022, 00380261221136417. https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261221136417.
  • Howson, Kelle, Hannah Johnston, Matthew Cole, Fabian Ferrari, Funda Ustek-Spilda, and Mark Graham. “Unpaid Labour and Territorial Extraction in Digital Value Networks.” Global Networks n/a, no. n/a. Accessed November 25, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12407.
  • Irons, Rebecca. “Ceviche RevolutionCoastal Cholera, Marine Microplastics, and (Re)Fashioning Identities in Postcolonial Peruvian Gastropolitics.” Gastronomica 22, no. 4 (November 1, 2022): 10–19. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2022.22.4.10.
  • Irvine, Benjamin. “Working the Waste Commodity Frontier: Metabolic Value and Informal Waste Work.” Antipode n/a, no. n/a (2022). https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12902.
  • Jaworski, Sophia. “Chemical Disability and Technoscientific Experimental Subjecthood: Reimagining the Canary in the Coal Mine Metaphor.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 8, no. 2 (November 7, 2022). https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v8i2.36206.
  • Koliev, Faradj, Baekkwan Park, and Andreas Duit. “Climate Shaming: Explaining Environmental NGOs Targeting Practices.” Climate Policy, November 11, 2022, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2022.2143315.
  • Kraftl, Peter. “Speculating with Childhoods, Plastics and Other Stuff.” In Speculative Geographies: Ethics, Technologies, Aesthetics, edited by Nina Williams and Thomas Keating, 187–202. Singapore: Springer Nature, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0691-6_12.
  • Leal, Diego A. Perdomo. “Towards More Repair of Mobile Phones in Spain.” Master of Science, Lund University, 2022. https://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=9101779&fileOId=9102045.
  • Liebman, Adam. “High-Metabolism Infrastructure and the Scrap Industry in Urban China.” The China Quarterly, November 21, 2022, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741022001606.
  • Makina, Anesu, and Mary Lawhon. “Permission to Appropriate: Waste Pickers’ ‘Guidelines’ for Contesting and Consolidating Claims to Waste on the Streets of Tshwane, South Africa.” Geoforum 137 (December 1, 2022): 52–60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.10.003.
  • Markic, Ana, James H. Bridson, Peta Morton, Lucy Hersey, Thomas Maes, and Melissa Bowen. “Microplastic Pollution in the Surface Waters of Vava’u, Tonga.” Marine Pollution Bulletin 185 (December 1, 2022): 114243. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2022.114243.
  • McFadden, Alexandra. “Wardens of Civilisation: The Political Ecology of Australian Far-Right Civilisationism.” Antipode n/a, no. n/a. Accessed November 25, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12903.
  • Moyo, Thandazile, Takunda Y. Chitaka, Aysha Lotter, Catherina J. Schenck, and Jochen Petersen. “Urban Mining versus Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM): An Interrogation of Their Contribution to Sustainable Livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa.” The Extractive Industries and Society, November 7, 2022, 101173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2022.101173.
  • Mulvaney, Dustin. “Solar Power and the Just Transition.” In The Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Cities and Landscapes in the Pacific Rim. Routledge, 2022.
  • Nixon, Jade, Sefanit Habtom, and Eve Tuck. “Rupture, Not Injury: Reframing Repair for Black and Indigenous Youth Experiencing School Pushout.” Journal of Visual Culture 21, no. 1 (April 1, 2022): 132–60. https://doi.org/10.1177/14704129221088300.
  • Noël, Marie, Catherine Wong, Peter S. Ross, Shreyas Patankar, Anahita Etemadifar, Carmen Morales-Caselles, Shirley Lyons, and Kelsey Delisle. “Microplastics Distribution in Sediment and Mussels along the British Columbia Coast, Canada.” Marine Pollution Bulletin 185 (December 1, 2022): 114273. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2022.114273.
  • Nøklebye, Emmy, Hans Nicolai Adam, Avanti Roy-Basu, Girija K. Bharat, and Eirik Hovland Steindal. “Plastic Bans in India – Addressing the Socio-Economic and Environmental Complexities.” Environmental Science & Policy 139 (January 1, 2023): 219–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2022.11.005.
  • Peng, Peng, and Arman Shehabi. “Regional Economic Potential for Recycling Consumer Waste Electronics in the United States.” Nature Sustainability, November 3, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00983-9.
  • Petoukhov, Konstantin. “‘They Just Let Us Rot to Death:’ Anti-Colonialism, Contestation, and Resistance to Reparations for Indian Residential School Abuse.” Social & Legal Studies, November 14, 2022, 09646639221138416. https://doi.org/10.1177/09646639221138416.
  • Portugaise, Mika Kaibara. “Electronic Waste and Extended Physical vs. Financial Producer Responsibility: A Case Study of Japanese and Canadian Business Practices.” Thesis, University of Iceland, 2022. https://skemman.is/handle/1946/42775.
  • Ress, Susanne, Nancy Kendall, Sophia Friedson-Ridenour, and Yaa Oparebea Ampofo. “Representations of Humans, Climate Change, and Environmental Degradation in School Textbooks in Ghana and Malawi.” Comparative Education Review, November 9, 2022, 000–000. https://doi.org/10.1086/722101.
  • Scarlett, Jazmin P. “The Harmful Legacy of Colonialism in Natural Hazard Risk.” Nature Communications 13, no. 1 (November 14, 2022): 6945. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34792-7.
  • Schlosser, K. “Allegory and Articulation in Geographies of Climate Fiction.” Geohumanities, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1080/2373566X.2022.2113337.
  • Slameršak, Aljoša, Giorgos Kallis, and Daniel W. O’ Neill. “Energy Requirements and Carbon Emissions for a Low-Carbon Energy Transition.” Nature Communications 13, no. 1 (November 14, 2022): 6932. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-33976-5.
  • Solomon, Marisa. “Ecologies Elsewhere.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 28, no. 4 (October 1, 2022): 567–87. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-9991341.
  • Souchen, Alex. War Junk: Munitions Disposal and Postwar Reconstruction in Canada. UBC Press, 2020.
  • Szto, Courtney, and Brian Wilson. “Reduce, Re-Use, Re-Ride: Bike Waste and Moving towards a Circular Economy for Sporting Goods.” International Review for the Sociology of Sport, November 16, 2022, 101269022211380. https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221138033.
  • Tan, Qian Hui. “Clearing the Air: Toxic Healthism and Cigarette(s) (Smoke) as (in)Toxicant(s).” In Routledge Handbook of Intoxicants and Intoxication, edited by Geoffrey Hunt, Tamar Antin, and Vibeke Asmussen Frank. Routledge, 2022.
  • Todd, Zoe. “Fossil Fuels and Fossil Kin: An Environmental Kin Study of Weaponised Fossil Kin and Alberta’s So-Called ‘Energy Resources Heritage.’” Antipode n/a, no. n/a. Accessed November 25, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12897.
  • Underhill, Vivian. “From Kern Island to the Streets of Bakersfield: Logics of Contamination, Embodied Empiricisms, and the Afterlives of Reclamation.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 8, no. 2 (November 7, 2022). https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v8i2.36623.
  • Varennes, Elodie, Denise Blanc, Antonin Azaïs, and Jean-Marc Choubert. “Upgrading Wastewater Treatment Plants to Urban Mines: Are Metals Worth It?” Resources, Conservation and Recycling 189 (February 1, 2023): 106738. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2022.106738.
  • Villarrubia-Gómez, Patricia, Bethanie Carney Almroth, and Sarah E. Cornell. “Re-Framing Plastics Pollution to Include Social, Ecological and Policy Perspectives.” Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 3, no. 11 (November 2022): 724–25. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-022-00359-9.
  • Vos, Julie de. “The Absence That Will Not  Go Away.” Journal of Material Culture, November 16, 2022, 13591835221136806. https://doi.org/10.1177/13591835221136806.
  • Wilson, David, and Elvin Wyly. “Toward a Dracula Urbanism:  Smart City Building in Flint and Jakarta.” Dialogues in Urban Research, November 20, 2022, 27541258221134500. https://doi.org/10.1177/27541258221134500.
  • Zapata Campos, María José, Sebastián Carenzo, Goodluck Charles, Jutta Gutberlet, Jaan-Henrik Kain, Michael O Oloko, Jessica Pérez Reynosa, and Patrik Zapata. “Grassroots Innovations in ‘Extreme’ Urban Environments. The Inclusive Recycling Movement.” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, October 31, 2022, 239965442211181. https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544221118191.
  • Zhan, M.X. “Waste in Zero-Waste Households: The Power of Materials and Norms in Everyday Consumption.” Worldwide Waste 5, no. 1 (2022). https://doi.org/10.5334/wwwj.85.
  • Zheng, Shuxian, Xuanru Zhou, Zhanglu Tan, Hua Zhang, Chan Liu, Hongchang Hao, Han Hu, Xiaomei Cai, Hanshi Yang, and Wenbo Luo. “Preliminary Study on the Global Impact of Sanctions on Fossil Energy Trade: Based on Complex Network Theory.” Energy for Sustainable Development 71 (December 1, 2022): 517–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esd.2022.10.023.

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