The Dirt
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, opportunities, and calls for proposals in the field. Here is the Dirt for Winter 2024.
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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.
Alnıaçık Özyer, Eylül Tuğçe, and Rumeysa Çavuş Peksöz. 2023. Semiocide and Wasteocene in the Making: The Case of Adana Landfill. Biosemiotics, Sept 12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-023-09539-6
Andolfatto, Lorenzo. 2023. Suffer a Waste Change: Reading Chen Qiufan’s The Waste Tide and Wu Ming-Yi’s The Man with the Compound Eyes along the Lines of Discard. GeoHumanities, 9(1):64-77. https://doi.org/10.1080/2373566X.2022.2141132.
Arnold, Nadine, and Christopher Dorn. 2023. Waste in Organizations: Discerning (Dis)Value in Rational, Natural, and Open Systems Perspectives. Critical Sociology, Nov. https://doi.org/10.1177/08969205231214251
Barnes, Nicole Elizabeth. 2023. The Many Values of Night Soil in Wartime China. Past & Present 259(1):194-228; May. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtac021
Boucher, Isabelle. 2023. The Multiscalar Worlds Of Remediation: Sitting Halfway Down a Meandering Path. PUBLIC Journal, 34(68): 78-91. https://doi.org/10.1386/public_00168_1
Buekens, Sara. 2023. Toward an Aesthetics of Waste: The Representation of Social Inequality and Human Rights Violations in Francophone Literature of the Indian Ocean Islands. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, July 17. https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isad045
Chahim, Dean. 2022. The Logistics of Waste: Engineering, Capital Accumulation, and the Growth of Mexico City. Antipode, July. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12864
Channell-Justice, Emily. 2023. From Garbage Wars to Green City: Defining Ukraine’s European Identity. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 46(2):211-25 https://doi.org/10.1111/plar.12537
Chen, Guo, Jia Feng, and Liwen Chen. 2023. Dharavi in Beijing? A Hidden Geography of Waste and Migrant Exclusion. The Professional Geographer 75(1):187-205; Jan. https://doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2022.2112965
De Wolff, Kim. 2024. ‘Floating Things’ and Methodological Drift: Accounting for Haunted Materialities in the North Pacific Ocean. Social Studies of Science, January 25. https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127241226829
Demaria, Federico. 2023. The Political Ecology of Informal Waste Recyclers in India: Circular Economy, Green Jobs, and Poverty. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192869050.001.0001
Dewan, Camelia. 2023. Toxic Residues in Fluid Commons: More-Than-Economic Dispossession and Shipbreaking in Coastal Bangladesh. Ethnos. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2023.2208309
Dias-Ferreira, B. Bringsken, C. Vilarinho, C. 2023. Sociology of Waste: Norms as Pre-Disposition for Acceptance of PAYT Tariffs. WASTES: Solutions, Treatments and Opportunities IV, CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003345084
du Plessis, Pierre L. 2023. Hunting and Gathering Practices of the Anthropocene: In Conversation about Hunting-Gathering. Etnofoor, 35(1):127-32. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27233681
Ektander, Caroline, and Jonas Stuck. 2023. Redistribute Toxicity: An Art Intervention into the Legacy of the Inter-German Toxic Waste Trade. Environmental Humanities 15(3):104-18; Nov. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-10746012
Garb, Yaakov, and Nelly Leblond. 2023. Flowing Toxics: E-Waste Field Work in the Palestinian-Israeli Space. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, May 29. https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544231176923
Gardner, Jonathan. 2023. Gaining Ground: Bomb Rubble, Reclamation and Revenance. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 10(1):25-48; Jan. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.25782
Gesing, Friederike. 2023. The Material Politics of Slurry: Mobilisations and Transformations along the Waste–Fertiliser Continuum. Political Geography 101; March. 102832. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.102832
Gille, Zsuzsa. 2023. Global Waste. In Research Handbook on the Sociology of Globalization, edited by Christian Karner and Dirk Hofäcker. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, pp83-95. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=30669078
Goldstein, Zoe. 2023. If It’s Vacant Take It: Interventions in Geographies of Exclusion in Oakland, California. Radical History Review 2023(145):129-46; Jan. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-10063869
Gregson, Nicky. 2023. Discard, Social Order and Social Life: Or, Discard Is Foundational to Understanding Waste. The Waste of the World, Bristol University Press, pp31–51. https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/monochap/book/9781529232462/ch002.xml
Guerreschi, Asia, and Fernando J. Díaz López. 2023. A Bibliometric Analysis on Cooperatives in Circular Economy and Eco-Innovation Studies. Sustainability 15( 21); Jan. https://doi.org/10.3390/su152115595
Hajek, Isabelle. 2023. Engaging in Reuse, Gleaning and Zero Waste in France: A Civic Ecology of Matter. Environmental Sociology, 9(4):386-97. https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2023.2240080
Hart, Allyson, et al. 2023. Time to Discard the Term ‘Discard.’ American Journal of Transplantation, 23(5):608-10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajt.2023.01.018
Hayward-Jansen, Jude. 2023. White Trash and the Queer South: Doing Sex Badly in Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 29(4):477-500; Oct. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-10740469
Hird, Myra J., and Hillary Predko 2023.. Extracting Reconciliation: Indigenous Lands, (In)Human Wastes, and Colonial Reckoning. Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003342526
Holleran, Samuel, and Max Holleran. 2023. 9/11 Steel: Distributed Memorialization. Journal of Material Culture 28(3):351-70; Sept. https://doi.org/10.1177/13591835221139676
Hristova, Maria, et al. 2023. Energy/Waste: Introduction. Slavica Bergensia, edited by Maria Hristova et al. Vol. 14, Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen. https://doi.org/10.15845/slavberg.21.c129
Isenhour, Cindy, Brieanne Berry, and Erin Victor. 2023. Circular Economy Disclaimers: Rethinking Property Relations at the End of Cheap Nature. Frontiers in Sustainability 3. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsus.2022.1007802
Jagoe, Eva-Lynn. 2023. The Use and Abuse of Compost. Comparative Literature Studies 60(3):485–96; Aug. https://doi.org/10.5325/complitstudies.60.3.0485
Kim, Hyena. 2023. Living as Waste-Bodies in a Dump: Feral Sociality and Ecofeminist Education of Ecotone. Gender and Education, pp1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2023.2284792
Kryder-Reid, Elizabeth, and Sarah May. 2023. Toxic Heritage: Legacies, Futures, and Environmental Injustice. Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003365259
Lepawsky, Josh. 2023. Thinking with Waste to Know the Economic. Journal of Cultural Economy, 16(4):587-93. https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2023.2229359
Liboiron, Max, and Riley Cotter. 2023. Review of Participation of Indigenous Peoples in Plastics Pollution Governance. Cambridge Prisms: Plastics 1:e16; Jan. https://doi.org/10.1017/plc.2023.16
Liboiron, Max, Marc Higgins, and Sara Tolbert. 2024. n Conversation with Max Liboiron: Towards an Everyday, Anticolonial Feminist Science (Education) Practice In Reimagining Science Education in the Anthropocene, Volume 2, edited by Sara Tolbert, Maria F.G. Wallace, Marc Higgins, and Jesse Bazzul, 343–61. Palgrave Studies in Education and the Environment. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35430-4_19
Liboiron, Max, Rui Liu, Elise Earles, and Imari Walker-Franklin. 2023. Models of Justice Evoked in Published Scientific Studies of Plastic Pollution. FACETS 8 (January): 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1139/facets-2022-0108
Lifset, Reid, Harri Kalimo, Antti Jukka, Petrus Kautto, and Mirella Miettinen. “Restoring the Incentives for Eco-Design in Extended Producer Responsibility: The Challenges for Eco-Modulation.” Waste Management 168, pp 189–201; Aug. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2023.05.033
Lima, Maria Raquel Passos. 2023. Residual Infrastructures: Colonialisms in Waste Management and Catador Politics. Estudos Avançados, Vol. 37, pp63–82. https://doi.org/10.1590/s0103-4014.2023.37107.005en
Lima, Maria Raquel Passos. 2023. Anthropology of Waste: A Research Agenda for the Study of Cities in the Era of Climate Change. Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology 20 (December 11, 2023): e20912. https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412023v20d912
Limor-Sagiv, Galia, and Nurit Lissovsky. 2023. Place and Displacement: Historical Geographies of Israel’s Largest Landfill. Journal of Historical Geography 80:32–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2023.01.001
Lucy, Meghann. 2023. Divestment as Investment: ‘Kondo-Ing’ Selves in the Context of Overaccumulation. Journal of Consumer Culture, 23(4):769-88. https://doi.org/10.1177/14695405221140545
Magalhães Lopes, Maíra. 2023. Marking Humans for Consumption, Whilst Erasing Others: Affective Becomings and the Workings of (Dis)Comfort. Journal of Consumer Culture, 23(4):949-70. https://doi.org/10.1177/14695405231160595
Mair, Heather. 2023. Wasted: Towards a Critical Research Agenda for Disposability in Leisure. Leisure Studies 42(5):820-28. https://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2022.2148718
Mclnnes, Jacki. 2023. Between Damage and Possibility: Informal Recycling Conceived as Life Raft. Image & Text, no. 37, pp1–19. https://doi.org/10.17159/2617-3255/2023/n37a6
Meenakshi, S., and Krupa Shah. 2023. Beyond Trash and Garbage: Shifting Perspectives on Discard. Capitalism Nature Socialism, pp. 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2023.2272546
Muldoon, Lena. To the Rescue! An Ethnography of Food Waste Reduction Practices in the Netherlands. Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology 20 (December 1, 2023): e20907. https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412023v20d907
Newell, Sasha. 2023. Of Hoarding and Housekeeping: Material Kinship and Domestic Space in Anthropological Perspective. Berghahn Books. https://doi.org/10.3167/9781805390923
O’Gorman, Emily, William San Martín, Mark Carey, and Sandra Swart. 2023. The Routledge Handbook of Environmental History. Taylor & Francis. https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Environmental-History/OGorman-San-Martin-Carey-Swart/p/book/9781032003597
O’Hare, Patrick, and Dagmar Rams, eds. 2024. Circular Economies in an Unequal World: Waste, Renewal, and the Effects of Global Circularity. Bloomsbury. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/circular-economies-in-an-unequal-world-9781350296633/
O’Hare, Patrick. 2023. Waste, Colonialism, and the City. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 29(1):202-05. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13868
Pál, Viktor, and Iris Borowy. 2023. Waste and Discards in the Asia Pacific Region: Social and Cultural Perspectives. Taylor & Francis. https://www.routledge.com/Waste-and-Discards-in-the-Asia-Pacific-Region-Social-and-Cultural-Perspectives/Pal-Borowy/p/book/9781032366142
Paquette, Nadège. 2023. Plastic Like Jellyfish: Getting Intimate with Large and Small Scales of Being in Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being. Tba: Journal of Art, Media, and Visual Culture 5(1). https://doi.org/10.5206/tba.v5i1.16462
Picard, Michael, Albert Brenchat-Aguilar, Timothy Carroll, Jane Gilbert, and Nicola Miller, eds. 2023. Wastiary. UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800085183
Pyyhtinen, Olli, and Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen. 2023. The Gift of Waste: The Diversity of Gift Practices among Dumpster Divers. Anthropological Theory 23(2):209-31; JunE. https://doi.org/10.1177/14634996221117318
Pyyhtinen, Olli, Stylianos Zavos, Alma Onali, Ulla-Maija Sutinen, and Niina Uusitalo. 2022. The Decaying Stuff of the Anthropocene: Exploring Contemporary Trashscapes through Ruination. Digithum 30: 1–11. https://doi.org/10.7238/d.v0i30.416569
Reno, Joshua, and Kelly Alexander. 2023. Just Desserts: The Morality of Food Waste in America. Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment, 45(1):1-11. https://doi.org/10.1111/cuag.12304
Reno, Joshua. 2023. Engineering Military Rubbish: The Ethics of Waste in and around a Lockheed Martin Facility in New York State. Ethnos 88(3):444-66; May. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2020.1796736
Rizvi, Uzma Z. 2023. Archaeology as Radical Care. Forum Kritische Archäologie, Vol. 12, pp. 63–65. https://doi.org/10.17169/refubium-40267
Szto, Courtney, and Brian Wilson. 2023. Reduce, Re-Use, Re-Ride: Bike Waste and Moving towards a Circular Economy for Sporting Goods. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 58(6):911-31; Sept. https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221138033
Taylor, A. R. E. 2023. Cloud Backup and Restore: The Infrastructure of Digital Failure. Routledge International Handbook of Failure, Taylor & Francis. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/60708
Tereszewski, Marcin. 2023. The Ethical Call from the Hinterlands: Conceptualizing Waste in J. G. Ballard’s High-Rise and Concrete Island. Literary and Cultural Representations of the Hinterlands; Tereszewski, Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak, Dominika Ferens, Katarzyna Nowak-McNeice, Marcin, ed. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032617732
Tjandra, Elena G. 2023. Mining Presence: Extraction and Embodiment in Valles Centrales, Oaxaca. Social & Cultural Geography. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2023.2189290
Villamarín-Freire, Sara. 2023. On the Uses of Waste. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses. No. 86; pp. 157–70. https://doi.org/10.25145/j.recaesin.2023.86.10
Walker, Sarah. 2023. Dakar Has Lost Its Lungs: What the Spatialised Inequalities of Waste Can Tell Us about Climate (Im)Mobilities. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, Dec. https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544231219844
Wist, Allie E. S. 2023. Anarchiving the Anthropocene: Waste and Relationality. Technoetic Arts, Vol. 21, pp265–83. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1386/tear_00114_1
Zapata Campos, María José, et al. 2023. (Re)Gaining the Urban Commons: Everyday, Collective, and Identity Resistance. Urban Geography 44(7):1259-84; Aug. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2022.2090117
Zhang, Amy. 2024. Spectacular Technology, Invisible Harms: Witnessing Techno-Science on Waste Tours in China. Science, Technology, & Human Values, January 23. https://doi.org/10.1177/01622439231224503
Zoysa, Rapti Siriwardane-de, Vani Sreekantha, David Mwambari, Simi Mehta, and Madhurima Majumder. 2023. The Unruly Arts of Ethnographic Refusal: Power, Politics, Performativity. Fennia – International Journal of Geography 201(2):169–82; Dec. https://doi.org/10.11143/fennia.121832
Zubiaurre, Maite. 2023. Everything is Rubbish/Nothing is Rubbish: Basurama and the Trashformation of Public Space. In Luis I. Prádanos, ed., A Companion to Spanish Environmental Cultural Studies. Boydell & Brewer. https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781855663695/a-companion-to-spanish-environmental-cultural-studies/
Reports & Special Editions
- Yellowhead Institute. 2023. Data Colonialism in Canada’s Chemical Valley: Aamjiwnaang First Nation and the Failure of the Pollution Notification System. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/data-colonialism-in-canadas-chemical-valley/
- Plastics. 2024. Tba: Journal of Art, Media, and Visual Culture, Jan. https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/tba/issue/view/1552
- Making Ground: The Archaeology of Waste Landscapes. 2023. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 10(1). Edited by Jonthan Gardner, Jeffrey Benjamin, and Matt Edgeworth. https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCA/issue/view/2415
Events/Conferences/Symposia
- Waste & Value Conference; University of Copenhagen, 25-26 April 2024; abstracts due 1 February 2024
- Repairing and Caring: Northeastern Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Providence RI, 12-13 April 2024; abstracts due 1 March
Student Research
- Barlow, Matthew Peter. 2023. Waste in the Tropics: Urban Environments and (Post) Colonial Infrastructure in Kochi, India. Doctoral dissertation, School of Social Sciences, University of Adelaide. https://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/handle/2440/138851
- Finkelman, Mir. 2023. Mending over Ending: The Power of Waste, Value, and Repair in Fashion. Masters thesis, Pratt Institute. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2835789209/abstract/A4ED8ED8B43B4890PQ/1
- McElligott, Phoebe. 2023. Plastic is a Virus: A Novel Framework for Understanding Plastic Pollution. Senior Thesis, Department of Geography, McGill University. http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/iso639-2/eng
- Pitas, John-Henry. 2023. Waste Infrastructure as Strategy: Constructing Capitalism Through Waste in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2833416515/abstract/D1E993158D7042CAPQ/1
- Straus, Gabriel. 2023. ‘Dancing with [Philly’s] Ghosts’: Recycled Materials and Meanings at an Artists’ Residency. Senior thesis, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Swarthmore College. https://works.swarthmore.edu/theses/338
Reviews
- Baker, Lauren M. 2023. Review of Stamatopoulou-Robbins’ Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine. The Journal of Development Studies 59(5):783-85; May. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2023.2168584
- Iarocci, Andrew. 2023. Review of Souchen’s War Junk: Munitions Disposal and Postwar Reconstruction in Canada. Canadian Military History 32(1):1-3. https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol32/iss1/15/
- Letcher-Nicholls, Thomas. 2023. This Is a Book about Relations: Pollution Is Colonialism by Max Liboiron. In The Goose 20(1): Article 14. https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol20/iss1/14/
- Pollans, Lily Baum. Review of Strach and Sullivan’s The Politics of Trash: How Governments Used Corruption to Clean Cities, 1890–1929. Journal of the American Planning Association 90(1):177-78; Jan. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2023.2247821
Recent Discard Studies Posts
- Book Review Essay: The Waste of the World (Nicky Gregson) by Josh Lepawsky
- Sorting It Out: Sustainability in Higher Education by Kathy Zhang
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- Discard Studies Staffing Changes
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New Patrons
Discard Studies is funded, in part, by the generous patronage of our readers, via Patreon. New patrons include:
- Aoife Mac Namara. Thank you!
- Manisha Anantharaman. Thank you!
- Shosha Capps. Thank you!
- MYGray. Thank you!
- Lily Baum Pollans. Thank you!
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