A review of The Perfect Food and the Filth Disease: Milk, Typhoid Fever, and the Science of State Medicine in Victorian Britain, 1850-1900
Discard Studies has created a new resource page for dissertations and thesis related to the field. The partial review below is taken from Dissertation Reviews, a relatively new online publishing venue for freshly minted research (we highly recommend new graduates submit their work). If you would like your or your advisee’s dissertation on the Discard […]
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Litterati: A Digital Landfill of Good-Looking Trash
By Max Liboiron. I suspect, that like me, urban followers of the Discard Studies blog spend a lot of time looking down. There is a lot of interesting trash on sidewalks, roads, and gutters, and now there is a place to share your awareness with the world (provided you have a smart phone): Litterati, the […]
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The Plastisphere and other 21st century waste ecosystems
By Max Liboiron. You’ve probably heard of “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch” or “The Gyre,” or other names given to the phenomenon of ocean plastics. You may have asked yourself why we just don’t clean it all up with a giant sea-vacuum. You may have even seen inventions meant to do just that. But perhaps […]
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Accumulation: The Material Politics of Plastic
The newly published edited collection Accumulation: The Material Politics of Plastic explores the material politics of plastics. From food packaging to credit cards, plastic facilitates every part of our daily lives, and stars a central role in discard debates. Universalised and abstracted, it is often treated as the passive object of political deliberations, or a […]
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The Atemporality of “Ruin Porn”: The Carcass & the Ghost by Sarah Wanenchak
*This post originally appeared on Cyborgology. Objects have lives. They are witness to things. –This American Life, “The House on Loon Lake” Atlantic Cities’ feature on the psychology of “ruin porn” is worth a look–in part because it’s interesting in itself, in part because it features some wonderful images, and in part because it has […]
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Paradoxurus, or the best cup of joe
I have nothing to add to this one. Published in the pages of Foodservice Director Magazine (July 15, 2013).
E-waste Academy for Scientists and Social Scientists (deadline July 31)
Organised by the United Nations University under the aegis of the StEP Initiative, the EWAS has over the past three editions brought together nearly 60 young researchers from around the world, looking at solving the e-waste from different disciplinary perspectives. It has become the foremost forum available to young scientists to share their knowledge, interact […]
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Detritus from Historic Deadhorse Bay: Trash Meant to be Left Behind
By Max Liboiron A long, long time ago, a younger, grubbier New York City dumped its trash on Barren Island off the south shores of Brooklyn. Barren Island was its own self-contained community and had a one-room school house, four saloons, and five factories boiling garbage all day, everyday. The buildings and island inhabitants–mostly immigrant […]
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Waste as Profit & Alternative Economies
*This is an edited transcript from the IDEAS City lecture on waste by Max Liboiron. Modern waste—that is, mid-20th to 21st century waste—is characterized by a few things. First, there is its tonnage– there is a lot of it, mostly industrial. About 98 percent of waste produced in the United States is industrial solid waste, […]
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We Need a Fixer (Not Just a Maker) Movement By Clive Thompson
This post originally appeared on Wired Opinion 06.18.13. Madison Sheffield cracks open a toaster oven, jams her hand inside, then turns on the power. It looks like she’s about to electrocute herself, but she seems unfazed. “Thermostat or heating element?” Sheffield mutters, yanking on wires and poking around with a multimeter. “Why isn’t this working?” […]
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