Economies of Recycling

The Global Transformation of Materials, Values and Social Relations

Catherine Alexander, Joshua Reno, Catherine Alexander, Joshua Reno

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781780321950
• eBook ISBN: 9781780321974
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Économie
• Subtopic: Économie politique

For some, recycling is a big business; for others a moralised way of engaging with the world. But, for many, this is a dangerous way of earning a living. With scrap now being the largest export category from the US to China, the sheer scale of this global trade has not yet been clearly identified or analysed. Combining fine-grained ethnographic analysis with overviews of international material flows, Economies of Recycling radically changes the way we understand global and local economies as well as the new social relations and identities created by recycling processes. Following global material chains, this groundbreaking book reveals astonishing connections between persons, households, cities and global regions as objects are reworked, taken to pieces and traded. With case studies from Africa, Latin America, South Asia, China, the former Soviet Union, North America and Europe, this timely collection debunks common linear understandings of production, exchange and consumption and argues for a complete re-evaluation of North-South economic relationships.

Index

absent presence, concept of, 54

accidents in the workplace, 39, 191 see also risk

acrylic materials, recycling of, 43, 47

Alang (India), ship-breaking in, 61, 63–4

aluminium, recycling of, in Brazil, 180

American Western Steamship Company, 190

anthropology, emergence of, 9

Aratov, Boris, 264

archaeology, 8–9 see also garbology

Argentina, 143–63; financial crisis in, 144, 147–50, 153–6, 158, 160 n.13; impoverishment of middle class, 154–5; Law of Insolvency and Bankruptcy (1995, revised), 148; National Employment Law (1991), 147; president of, 143

Ariès, Philippe, The Hour of Our Death, 277

Arkhipov, Vladimir, 257–8

arts of transience, 65, 67, 72, 73

asbestos, 73, 74

assemblages, 8–9, 22, 73, 198, 200, 202

Association of Catadores in Jardim Gramacho (ACAMJG), 177, 179

Australia: disassembly of computers in, 100; uranium mining in, 81

Baixada Fluminense (Brazil), 170–2, 174–5

Bangladesh, 17; transforming things in, 59–75

bankruptcy, and liquidation of businesses, 148; fraudulent, 152–3

banks, national, 237

Basel Action Network (BAN), 27 n.11, 98, 101

Basel Convention on trade in toxic waste, 14, 60, 100

BAUEN cooperative (Argentina), 149–54, 157

bedpans, 245; as locus of disciplinary power, 252; symbolism of, 247

Beijing Zhongse Institute of Secondary Materials, 104, 107

Benjamin, Walter, 9; Moscow Diary, 259, 260–2, 266, 270; The Arcades Project, 10

biomedical science, commoditization in, 209

biomedical waste: disposal of, 214, 245; recovery of, in India, 214–15

biopolitics, 185–7, 245–51 see also necropolitics

birth and death, hiding of, 288; witnessing of, 277

black market, lack of data for, 14, 235

blankets: mink blankets, 52–3; production process of, 49–50; relief, manufacture of, 35–58

blessing, 223; of donors and volunteers, 220–1; of medical supplies, 221–2, 229

bodily waste see waste, bodily

body/person metonymy, 245

Bourgois, Philippe, 167

Brazil, 4; Kubitschek government of, 171; pulp industry in, 179; record of recycling in, 180; waste disposal in, 164–84

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Table of contents

• Cover
• About the editors
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Section One: Global waste flows
• Section Two: The ethics of waste labour
• Section Three: Traces of former lives
• Afterword
• About the contributors
• Notes
• References
• Index