Schlehe, Judith: Waste and social mobilisation: Anthropological explorations beyond Asia and Europe.
Abstract:
Waste, especially plastic and toxic waste, is a man-made disaster rooted in the historical relations between humans, materials, and environments. The global waste trade is a multi-billion-dollar industry in which Western countries relocate their waste to the Global South, turning the land, oceans, and atmosphere into dumping grounds. This waste problem challenges the notions of growth, modernisation, and human-nonhuman relations. There is a need for global solutions that overcome binary frames of representation such as 'Asia' and 'Europe'. An inclusive approach, as well as engagement in mutual transformations, requires increased global environmental awareness and transregional collaboration. However, awareness does not automatically translate into action. Furthermore, emerging global environmental regimes tend to ignore local diversities in waste practices, related worldviews, and ways in which people are mobilised to think about and act on waste solutions. Waste is always embedded in social, gendered, and political asymmetries and economic contestation. Furthermore, it is tied to peculiar moral sensibilities. Differences in context, thought, and practice, as well as in socio-environmental relations and frictions, should thus be acknowledged as bases of mobilisation and collaboration.
In: [IIAS] The Newsletter | No. 86 | Summer 2020: 34-35.
Full article: https://www.iias.asia/the-newsletter/article/waste-and-social-mobilisation-anthropological-explorations-beyond-asia-and
