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.
Les mer
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