The Dirt

Festive lights hang from excavators over a candle-lit dinner table surrounded by piles of trashDiscard 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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The Zotero library is updated with the publication of each new edition of The Dirt and can be found on the Resources page.

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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

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

Reviews

Recent Discard Studies Posts

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