Rubbish. Waste. Trash. Whatever term you choose to describe the things we throw away, the connotations are the same; of something dirty, useless and incontrovertibly 'bad'. But does such a dismissive rendering mask a more nuanced reality? In _Rubbish Belongs to the Poor_, Patrick O'Hare journeys to the heart of Uruguay's waste disposal system in order to reconceptualize rubbish as a 21st century commons, at risk of enclosure. On a giant landfill site outside the capital Montevideo we meet the book's central protagonists, the 'classifiers': waste-pickers who recover and recycle materials in and around its fenced but porous perimeter. Here the struggle of classifiers against the enclosure of the landfill, justified on the grounds of hygiene, is brought into dialogue with other historical and contemporary enclosures - from urban privatizations to rural evictions - to shed light on the nature of contemporary forms of capitalist dispossession. Supplementing this rich ethnography with the author's own insights from dumpster diving in the UK, the book analyses capitalism's relations with its material surpluses and what these tell us about its expansionary logics, limits and liminal spaces. _Rubbish Belongs to the Poor_ ultimately proposes a fundamental rethinking of the links between waste, capitalism and dignified work.
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Hygienic Enclosure and the Waste Commons

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781786807496
Publisert
2022
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Vendor
Pluto Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok

Forfatter