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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.
List of contents
PART I: INTRODUCING THE FIELD OF WASTE STUDIES 1. Introduction: Waste Studies as a Field, Zsuzsa Gille and Joshua Lepawsky 2. At Home with the Waste Scholar, Zsuzsa Gille, Joshua Lepawsky, Catherine Alexander, and Nicky Gregson PART II: QUESTIONS WASTE SCHOLARS ASK 3. Matter out of place, Max Liboiron 4. Waste and Whiteness, Joshua O. Reno and Britt Halvorson 5. Landfill Life and the Many Lives of Landfills, Patrick O'Hare 6. Reading the Signs: Some Ways Waste is Framed in Tunisia, Jamie Furniss 7. Unmaking the Made: The Troubled Temporalities of Waste, Heike Weber 8. Commodification and Respect: Indigenous Contributions to the Sociology of Waste, Michelle Schmidt PART III: METHODS WASTE SCHOLARS USE 9. Comparative Methods for the Study of Waste, Raul Pacheco-Vega 10. Teaching Critical Waste Studies in Higher Education, Kate Parizeu 11. Hunting for Hidden Treasures: A Research Methodology on China's Informal Recycling Sector, Benjamin Steuer 12. Waste Metrics from the Ground Up, Samantha MacBride 13. The Potential Role of Gamification: An Innovative Intervention Method in Waste Studies, Tammara Soma, Belinda Li and Virginia MacLaren PART IV: CASES WASTE SCHOLARS INVESTIGATE 14. The Experience of Nuclear Waste, Romain Garcier 15. Uranium Legacies and Settler-Colonial Imaginaries: Nuclear Waste as History, Proximity and Colonial matter, Emily Potter 16. Brownfields as Waste/Race Governance: US Contaminated Property Redevelopment and Racial Capitalism, Shiloh Krupar 17. Of Ships of Doom and Icebergs: Early Perspectives on the Global Hazardous Waste Trade, Kate O'Neill 18. Oil Wasting: The Necroaesthetics of Energy Expenditure, Amanda Boetzkes 19. Waste Picker Organizations and Urban Sustainability, Jutta Gutberlet 20. Waste, Labor and Livelihoods in South Africa, Mary Lawhon, Nate Millington, and Kathleen Stokes 21. Prepping for the [Insert Here] Apocalypse and Wasting the Future, Myra Hird and Jacob Riha
About the author
Zsuzsa Gille is Professor of Sociology and Director of Global Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of
Paprika, Foie Gras, and Red Mud: The Politics of Materiality in the European Union (2016) and
From the Cult of Waste to the Trash Heap of History: The Politics of Waste in Socialist and Postsocialist Hungary (2007-recipient of honorable mention of the AAASS Davis Prize).
Josh Lepawsky is Professor of Geography at Memorial University, Canada. He is author of
Reassembling Rubbish: Worlding Electronic Waste and "Planet of fixers? Mapping the middle grounds of independent and do-it-yourself information and communication technology maintenance and repair".
Summary
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.
