Discard Studies Staffing Changes
We have news about the Discard Studies editorial team: after a decade of inspired and dedicated leadership, Max Liboiron is stepping down. While we are sorry for their…
Tag: Waste
The Dirt
Discard Studies is a young field of research that takes systems of waste and wasting as its topic of study, including but beyond conventional notions of trash and…
The Dirt
Discard Studies is a young field of research that takes systems of waste and wasting as its topic of study, including but beyond conventional notions of trash and…
Red Sludge on the Blue Danube
In Almásfüzitő, a small factory settlement on the banks of the Danube, hazardous waste is being used to create a topsoil to cover solidified red sludge – residue…
Call for a new Discard Studies Managing Editor
Starting in the early fall of 2021, we are looking for a new Managing Editor to oversee and carry out regular operations of Discard Studies and to create…
The Toil of Waste: Wasting and Redemption in the Global E-Waste Economy
Editorial Note: This post is part of our series highlighting the work of the Anthropology and Environment Society’s 2020 Roy A. Rappaport Prize Finalists. We asked them to outline…
Top 10 Discard Studies articles of 2020
It’s time for reminiscing! And what better topic to think back on than a year’s worth of trashy insights? Here are the top ten posts from Discard Studies…
Discard Studies Twitter Conference Schedule
The Discard Studies Twitter Conference is going live on November 16th and 17th! Here is the schedule. #Discard2020
Richard Irvine on his book, Deep Time
Interview by Jon Bialecki https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/an-anthropology-of-deep-time/D5B5D1825BF9D440246A17118E17080E Jon Bialecki: There is a lot to this book. It contains reflections on the …
Wem gehört der Müll?
Heute das Containern, früher das Holzsammeln: Straftaten aufgrund des westlichen Konzepts von Eigentum. Andreas Gehrlach blickt auf historische und aktuelle Parallelen in der Auseinandersetzung rund u…
CFP: Discard Studies Twitter Conference!
Discard Studies is throwing a Twitter conference! Twitter conferences are accessible, create a permanent record of scholarship, support conversations with diverse audiences, and best of all, the prese…
Outsides and insides: Covid-19 seen from the first floor of a house in Mirpur, Dhaka by Hasan Ashraf
In this contribution to Somatosphere’s Dispatches from the Pandemic we attend to practices of boundary making, of separating outsides from insides. The new coronavirus appeared on the global…
Anomalous Waste: Reckoning with Radioactivity in a Metal Scrap Market
Editorial Note: This post is part of our series highlighting the work of the Anthropology and Environment Society’s 2019 Roy A. Rappaport Prize Finalists. We asked them to outline the…
On the social nature of toilet paper
You would be forgiven for thinking that the first thing bought in a global crisis would be tinned, dried, and frozen foods; clean water; and medicines—things that enable…
Clean in Times of Covid-19: on Hygiene and Pollution by Mandy de Wilde
As the coronavirus pandemic spreads, air pollution and greenhouse emissions decrease, or so news reports say. The satellite images of China in lockdown provided a first striking example. In…
A Bibliography of Trash Animals
Gulls. Pigeons. Rats. Lice. These ‘trash animals’ live alongside waste, filth, ruination and decay. Attitudes, behaviour and infrastructure aimed at dealing with ‘trash animals’ tell us a lot…
Anthropocene Unseen: A Lexicon
The edited volume Anthropocene Unseen: A Lexicon, edited by Cymene Howe and Anand Pandian, was just published by Punctum Books and is available in pdf format FOR FREE…
Collecting waste in Sicily: old and new ways
BY FREEK COLOMBIJN Every human settlement has to think of a way to dispose its solid waste, but each place finds its own particular ways to do this.…
Top Discard Studies Clicks of 2019
We decided to do something new this year at Discard Studies: we tracked the links our readers followed. With ‘The Dirt” coming out monthly with it’s hundreds of…
Top Discard Studies posts of 2019
It’s time for reminiscing! And what better topic to think back on than a year’s worth of trashy insights? Here are the top ten posts from Discard Studies in…
The Dirt
To keep practitioners up-to-date, Discard Studies publishes The Dirt, a monthly compilation of recent publications, positions, opportunities, and calls for proposals in the field. Here is The Dirt…
Myths of the Circular Economy
Discard studies spoke with three leading waste researchers about the biggest myths of the circular economy.
Placing discard studies in Australia
Australian discard studies scholars Catherine Phillips, David Boarder Giles, and Gay Hawkins discuss intellectual traditions, settler colonialism, and the future of the field.
Do not waste waste
By Freek Colombijn. It is a truism to state that the amount of solid waste produced daily is enormous. Mount Everest has become a symbol of just how…