Discards of an Exodus: Archeology at the US/Mexican Border
Archeologist Jason De Leon uses discards left through undocumented migration on the US/Mexico border to narrate the social, political, and geographical elements of one of the world’s largest ongoing modern-day migrations. The University of Washington has published a full length article about his work. In a small, cluttered office in Denny Hall, De Leon is […]
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Geography does trash
Geography is a science of earthly lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena. Waste and discards shape, are shaped by, and re/disappear in these landscapes, and it would seem that geography has taken notice. In the upcoming American Association of Geographer‘s Conference in New York this February (24-28th), there are no less than three separate panels planned […]
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Foraging in the foreclosed commons
Kim Severson, a journalist writing for The New York Times, has penned a provocative article entitled “At Vacant Homes, Foraging for Fruit” in the August 14, 2011 edition of the paper. Her musings on a new, “guerrilla-style harvest…taking shape” should interest readers of Discard Studies. Severson writes about a local dog-walker, Kelly Callahan, who works in […]
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New solar-powered, trash-compacting rubbish bins in Jersey City
Jersey City has been using federal grant dollars throughout the summer to install new solar-powered trash compactors. These garbage cans compact the trash deposited in them to one fifth of the original bulk. Impressively, this results in many fewer trips by local sanitation trucks to empty the receptacles. Additionally, the compacting process uses only clean, […]
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Material World reviews the Bottom of Purses and Backs of Drawers
The Material World Blog has a post on two new books that may be of interest to our readers. The first is Paraphernalia by Steven Connor (London: Profile Books 2011): The delight of Paraphernalia is it is really a kind of literary equivalent of tipping out a person’s handbag or the back of their desk […]
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Methodology for Discard Studies
“Imagine coherence without consistency.” — John Law, After Method. If you start reading discard studies, you’ll come across the adage “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” in short order. This is more than a cliché: there is something about discards that is inherently contested, multiple and fragmented. Thus, discard scholars need methodologies that don’t […]
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Trash’s Competing Utopias
Our dominant waste management practices are decidedly utopic, takings the “no place” of utopia’s etymology quite literally. To create a “good place” of clean, disease-free municipalities, trash is exiled to “no place,” an ideal “away” that effects and troubles no one (except, as course, as environmental justice advocates tell us, someone– usually someones who are poor and part of minority communities– lives in “no place “).
Trash villains and garbage superheros in popular media (just a taste)
I recently watched a TV episode with The Garbage Collector, the anti-hero in an “environmental slasher film.” The Garbage Collector was a monstrous figure who lived in a landfill and seemed to battle bad guys even though it wasn’t clear whether he was a bad guy or good guy himself. This ambiguity seems to be […]
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Accumulation: The material ecologies and economies of plastic (A Review)
On June 21st around one hundred scholars and activists working in the humanities and social sciences (plus one scientist) converged at Goldsmiths College in London to talk plastic. Usually symposia on plastic are part of science, industry, the trades or environmental studies. Accumulation is the first of its kind. “The purpose of this interdisciplinary workshop […]
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Review of Dirt: The Filthy Reality of Everyday Life
The Wellcome Collection’s exhibition Dirt: The Filthy Reality of Everyday Life (March 24 – August 31, 2011) in London is a smorgasbord of over 200 fantastic dirt-related artifacts. Passerbys will find something interesting, disgusting, or odd to contemplate, and connoisseurs and scholars of dirt will find new tid bits to add to their repertoires and […]
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