From the Cult of Waste to the Trash Heap of History

From the Cult of Waste to the Trash Heap of History PDF Author: Zsuzsa Gille
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253116929
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Zsuzsa Gille combines social history, cultural analysis, and environmental sociology to advance a long overdue social theory of waste in this study of waste management, Hungarian state socialism, and post--Cold War capitalism. From 1948 to the end of the Soviet period, Hungary developed a cult of waste that valued reuse and recycling. With privatization the old environmentally beneficial, though not flawless, waste regime was eliminated, and dumping and waste incineration were again promoted. Gille's analysis focuses on the struggle between a Budapest-based chemical company and the small rural village that became its toxic dump site.

From the Cult of Waste to the Trash Heap of History

From the Cult of Waste to the Trash Heap of History PDF Author: Zsuzsa Gille
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253116929
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Get Book

Book Description
Zsuzsa Gille combines social history, cultural analysis, and environmental sociology to advance a long overdue social theory of waste in this study of waste management, Hungarian state socialism, and post--Cold War capitalism. From 1948 to the end of the Soviet period, Hungary developed a cult of waste that valued reuse and recycling. With privatization the old environmentally beneficial, though not flawless, waste regime was eliminated, and dumping and waste incineration were again promoted. Gille's analysis focuses on the struggle between a Budapest-based chemical company and the small rural village that became its toxic dump site.

Urban Pollution

Urban Pollution PDF Author: Eveline Dürr
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845456924
Category : Anthropology
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Re-examining Mary Douglas' work on pollution and concepts of purity, this volume explores modern expressions of these themes in urban areas, examining the intersections of material and cultural pollution. It presents ethnographic case studies from a range of cities affected by globalization processes such as neoliberal urban policies, privatization of urban space, continued migration and spatialized ethnic tension. What has changed since the appearance of Purity and Danger? How have anthropological views on pollution changed accordingly? This volume focuses on cultural meanings and values that are attached to conceptions of 'clean' and 'dirty', purity and impurity, healthy and unhealthy environments, and addresses the implications of pollution with regard to discrimination, class, urban poverty, social hierarchies and ethnic segregation in cities.

Wastelands

Wastelands PDF Author: Eirik Saethre
Publisher:
ISBN: 0520368517
Category : Dumpster diving
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
Wastelands is an in-depth exploration of trash, the scavengers who collect it, and the precarious communities it sustains. After enduring war and persecution in Kosovo, many Ashkali refugees fled to Belgrade, Serbia, where they were stigmatized as Gypsies, consigned to slums, sidelined from the economy, and subjected to violence. To survive, Ashkali collect the only resource available to them: garbage. Vividly recounting everyday life in an illegal Romani settlement, Eirik Saethre's searing book follows Ashkali as they scavenge through dumpsters, build shacks, siphon electricity, negotiate the recycling trade, and migrate between Belgrade, Kosovo, and the European Union. Saethre argues that trash is not just a means of survival--it reinforces the status of Ashkali as a polluted Other, creates indissoluble bonds to transnational capitalism, enfeebles bodies, and establishes a localized sovereignty. In these geographies of displacement, suffering is boring and trash is transformative.

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption PDF Author: Frank Trentmann
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191624357
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 720

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Book Description
The term 'consumption' covers the desire for goods and services, their acquisition, use, and disposal. The study of consumption has grown enormously in recent years, and it has been the subject of major historiographical debates: did the eighteenth century bring a consumer revolution? Was there a great divergence between East and West? Did the twentieth century see the triumph of global consumerism? Questions of consumption have become defining topics in all branches of history, from gender and labour history to political history and cultural studies. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption offers a timely overview of how our understanding of consumption in history has changed in the last generation, taking the reader from the ancient period to the twenty-first century. It includes chapters on Asia, Europe, Africa, and North America, brings together new perspectives, highlights cutting-edge areas of research, and offers a guide through the main historiographical developments. Contributions from leading historians examine the spaces of consumption, consumer politics, luxury and waste, nationalism and empire, the body, well-being, youth cultures, and fashion. The Handbook also showcases the different ways in which recent historians have approached the subject, from cultural and economic history to political history and technology studies, including areas where multidisciplinary approaches have been especially fruitful.

Comradely objects

Comradely objects PDF Author: Yulia Karpova
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526139863
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. The Russian avant-garde of the 1920s is broadly recognised to have been Russia’s first truly original contribution to world culture. In contrast, Soviet design of the post-war period is often dismissed as hack-work and plagiarism that resulted in a shabby world of commodities. This book offers a new perspective on the history of Soviet design by focusing on the notion of the comradely object as an agent of progressive social relations that state-sponsored Soviet design inherited from the avant-garde. It introduces a shared history of domestic objects, hand-made as well as machine made, mass-produced as well as unique, utilitarian as well as challenging the conventional notion of utility. This is a study of post-avant-garde Russian productivism at the intersection of intellectual history, social history and material culture studies, an account attentive to the complexities and contradictions of Soviet design.

Resisting Garbage

Resisting Garbage PDF Author: Lily Baum Pollans
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477323724
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Resisting Garbage presents a new approach to understanding practices of waste removal and recycling in American cities, one that is grounded in the close observation of case studies while being broadly applicable to many American cities today. Most current waste practices in the United States, Lily Baum Pollans argues, prioritize sanitation and efficiency while allowing limited post-consumer recycling as a way to quell consumers’ environmental anxiety. After setting out the contours of this “weak recycling waste regime,” Pollans zooms in on the very different waste management stories of Seattle and Boston over the last forty years. While Boston’s local politics resulted in a waste-export program with minimal recycling, Seattle created new frameworks for thinking about consumption, disposal, and the roles that local governments and ordinary people can play as partners in a project of resource stewardship. By exploring how these two approaches have played out at the national level, Resisting Garbage provides new avenues for evaluating municipal action and fostering practices that will create environmentally meaningful change.

Unmaking Waste

Unmaking Waste PDF Author: Sarah Newman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226826392
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
"In Unmaking Waste, Sarah Newman asks what happens when there are disagreements about what constitutes waste and what one should do with it, both at singular moments in time (for example, when ideas about waste collide in emerging colonial contexts) and across time (such as between those who left things behind in the past and the archaeologists who recover them). Newman examines ancient Mesoamerican understandings of waste, Euro-American perceptions of waste in New Spain, and early modern European ideals of civility and Christian understandings of good and bad, expressed metaphorically through cleanliness and filth. These differing perceptions, Newman argues, demands that we rethink centuries of assumptions imposed on other places, times, and peoples: so long as "waste" remains a category misunderstood to be common-sensical and stable, archaeological methods will prove unequal to their task. Newman instead proposes "anamorphic archaeology," an approach that emphasizes the possibility that archaeological objects have multiple physical and conceptual lives"--

Perspectives on Waste from the Social Sciences and Humanities

Perspectives on Waste from the Social Sciences and Humanities PDF Author: Richard Ek
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 152754883X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Waste is something we encounter on an everyday basis. Today, the waste-mountain is increasing despite ambitious measures being taken to decrease it. Consequently, increased scholarly interest is being devoted to waste, but primarily from a technocratic and scientific point of view. This compilation offers different perspectives on waste, its characteristics, and its presence in the world from social scientist and humanist standpoints. Waste is the constant companion to the human, and is thus inherent in modern society. Therefore, waste needs to be further approached and understood from a plethora of scholarly perspectives and disciplines, and further investigated through a multitude of methodologies and data collection techniques. The imagination of a future where waste-preventive actions and circular economies permeate society can only be a reality if technocratic and scientific accounts of what is to be done, when, and how, are complemented by social scientific and humanist concepts of the nature and constitution of waste. Such a perspective offers the possibility to understand how waste is constituted through relationships, language, materials, politics, practices and structures. This book shows that philosophers, historians, cultural theorists and economists have much to offer on the topic of waste as a part of everyday modern life.

Encyclopedia of Consumption and Waste

Encyclopedia of Consumption and Waste PDF Author: Carl A. Zimring
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1452266670
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1225

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Book Description
Archaeologists and anthropologists have long studied artifacts of refuse from the distant past as a portal into ancient civilizations, but examining what we throw away today tells a story in real time and becomes an important and useful tool for academic study. Trash is studied by behavioral scientists who use data com­piled from the exploration of dumpsters to better understand our modern society and culture. Why does the average American household send 470 pounds of uneaten food to the garbage can on an annual basis? How do different societies around the world cope with their garbage in these troubled environmental times? How does our trash give insight into our attitudes about gender, class, religion, and art? The Encyclopedia of Consumption and Waste explores the topic across multiple disciplines within the social sciences and ranges further to include business, consumerism, environmentalism, and marketing to comprise an outstanding reference for academic and public libraries.

The Routledge Handbook of Waste Studies

The Routledge Handbook of Waste Studies PDF Author: Zsuzsa Gille
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000523152
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of Waste Studies offers a comprehensive survey of the new field of waste studies, critically interrogating the cultural, social, economic, and political systems within which waste is created, managed, and circulated. While scholars have not settled on a definitive categorization of what waste studies is, more and more researchers claim that there is a distinct cluster of inquiries, concepts, theories and key themes that constitute this field. In this handbook the editors and contributors explore the research questions, methods, and case studies preoccupying academics working in this field, in an attempt to develop a set of criteria by which to define and understand waste studies as an interdisciplinary field of study. This handbook will be invaluable to those wishing to broaden their understanding of waste studies and to students and practitioners of geography, sociology, anthropology, history, environment, and sustainability studies.