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- Convenors:
-
Yvan Schulz
Peter Kirby (University of Oxford)
Anna Lora-Wainwright (University of Oxford)
- Formats:
- Panels
- Stream:
- Environment
- Location:
- Examination Schools Room 15
- Start time:
- 21 September, 2018 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel addresses calls to make material flows more circular and edifying through a critical analysis of the rise of the notion of 'circular economy'. We seek to better understand what counts as circular, who is allowed to trade on the margins, and how tidy theory is translated into practice.
Long Abstract:
Aspiring to make the prodigious waste of the world safe, productive, and edifying, calls to transform linear models of material decay into circular ones of rejuvenation and profit have become increasingly common of late. 'Closed loops' are invoked as a means to reduce the pollutant externalities of industry and consumption in order to make economic development more 'sustainable' and pure. This approach is manifest in, among others, the concept of 'circular economy', promoted by governments, environmental NGOs and international organisations, with deeply cultural modalities of implementation.
The idea that benefits can come from moving objects or materials in virtuous cycles instead of disposing of them is nothing new. Human history abounds with examples of practices that transform discards or byproducts into useful inputs. But the current emphasis on formal, mechanized circularity as an environmental good is a suggestive hallmark of the present era.
This panel addresses circularity from a robust critical perspective. Among other questions, we ask: What types of material flows do policymakers, NGOs, and specialists recognize or ignore? Who defines what counts as circular? Which social and economic entities are invited to participate in transitions from the linear to the circular, or excluded from it? Who is allowed to salvage and scavenge on the margins? How is tidy, sanitized theory translated into practice?
We welcome empirically grounded papers that question the promotion of circularity in all things material, including through such concepts as the circular economy, 'industrial symbiosis/ecology', 'zero emissions', 'cradle to cradle', and 'product service systems'.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Jacob Doherty (University of Edinburgh)
Paper short abstract:
Biomass briquettes made of organic waste promise to solve African crises of livelihoods, sanitation and deforestation. Briquettes production reveals that the closed loop converting waste to wealth is predicated on producing and managing the imagined socio-moral difference between community and slum.
Paper long abstract:
Biomass briquettes have emerged as a development silver bullet, simultaneously tackling crises of unemployment, urban waste management and rural deforestation. Briquettes have captured the imagination of international environmental NGOs operating in many African cities who promote briquette production, partnering with local community based organizations (CBOs) to improve urban livelihoods and sanitation. Made by transforming organic garbage into a new fuel source, they promise to turn waste to wealth. They do so by positing a virtuous circular economy that closes the metabolic rift between the city and the country that has accelerated in the context of rapid urbanization. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Bwaise (a low-income informal settlement in Kampala, Uganda), this paper examines the work that goes into producing briquettes, particularly the bureaucratic labor that goes into producing the 'community' of community based organization on paper as both technically capable and morally sound. This immaterial bureaucratic work is moral labor, a precondition of the material labor of gathering and sorting household waste and transforming it into bio-mass briquettes. While it is essential to making the waste-to-wealth project viable, it has the additional effect of exacerbating differences of gender and education within the CBO and between the CBO and the rest of Bwaise. Ultimately, the closed loop of the waste-to-wealth project is made possible by producing and managing the imagined socio-moral difference between community and slum.
Peter Kirby (University of Oxford)
Paper short abstract:
This paper presents much vaunted cycles of high-tech conversion in Japan and a largely disavowed side-loop of illicit export of wastes to China. The paper critiques both these systems while scrutinizing the symbiotic features they share and the leaky circularities they expose.
Paper long abstract:
By continually invoking circularity and mobilizing its populace, Japan has developed into one of the world's most enthusiastically recycling-oriented societies. Yet the moral economies of recycling there betray entrenched attitudes to waste, to edifying rationalization, and to productiveness on an archipelago that often defines itself with reference to material and thermodynamic scarcity. Perhaps most tellingly, varieties and practices of 'circular economy' in Japan—cryptically translated in policy documents as a 'sound material-cycle society'—derive from powerful discourses of efficiency and continual improvement (kaizen), much vaunted drivers of its globally successful electronics and automobile conglomerates. Along similar lines, circularity has spawned a sprawling apparatus of high-tech conversion facilities, heavily automated and competing amongst themselves for efficient supremacy through use of clever sorting technologies and design strategies—all the while drawing Japanese away from more eco-responsible approaches such as simple repair and reuse, for example. The exalted system also depends, crucially, on the banal labour of households and communities, fastidiously (or begrudgingly) participating in a complex and sometimes punitive regime of collection and conversion.
Yet despite its admitted flaws and problematic distortions, this recycling system has chopped and whirred alongside a largely disavowed side-loop of more or less illicit export of usually lower-grade wastes to other countries, notably China. Focussing on electronic waste (a.k.a. e-waste, or WEEE) this paper critiques both these systems while scrutinizing the symbiotic features they share and the leaky circularities they expose.
Ka-ming Wu (Chinese University of Hong Kong )
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the cultural politics of a used clothes recycling program led by the biggest online retailer in China that infuses the language of techno-logistics, infrastructural competence, and environmental sustainability.
Paper long abstract:
Last year, JD.com, also known as Jingdong, one of the largest online retailers in the world by transaction volume and revenue, has announced a grand recycling program of "Used Clothes New Lives." Jingdong claims that the program aims not only to collect used clothes to reduce the production of waste and to recycle raw materials, it promotes the novel online technology of allowing donors to track where their used clothes go and how they reach the new recipients. Supported also by Tencent and WWF China, the program has been launched in fourteen Chinese cities and has collected over 330 000 pieces of used clothes. JIngdong prides the success of the program by its infrastructural and logistical capacities: its ability to mobilize over 20000 delivery men, who show up at customers' doors once they press the button of "I want to donate"; its facilities of delivery trucks to send the cleaned used clothes to charity organizations or schools in remote rural areas; and its online charity platform which allows donors to check the entire logistic flows and process. The paper asks the following questions. How is the concept of circular economy promoted in this specific program in major cities in China? How does it appeal to urban middle class citizens? How are the concepts of logistics, infrastructures, smart delivery and tracking systems talked about and perceived? What is the cultural politics of a circular economic program that infuses the language of techno-logistics, infrastructural competence, and environmental sustainability?
Yvan Schulz Anna Lora-Wainwright (University of Oxford)
Paper short abstract:
Based on a case study of a "circular economy" industrial park located in a recycling town in China, this paper scrutinizes the concept and its implementation in that country. It points to the highly disruptive character of changes operated by the Chinese state in the name of increased circularity.
Paper long abstract:
The concept of a circular economy plays a crucial role in contemporary China. It has been enshrined in a national law in 2008 and repeatedly reaffirmed by the government thereafter. Among the "pilot projects" set up to turn the concept into reality, large industrial parks have drawn particular attention, and earned China a reputation as a leading country in the effort to move away from an unsustainable, "linear" economic model.
This paper examines China's circular economy by juxtaposing theory and practice. It presents a case study of an industrial park built to house local companies in Guiyu (Guangdong Province), a town that specializes in e-waste recycling. Having visited Guiyu every year since 2012, we were able to observe the park's evolution, from mere architectural drawing to vast complex of multi-storied buildings.
Based on ethnographic fieldwork, we argue that, while the park has certainly improved the environmental impact of recycling activities in Guiyu, it has also caused a significant slowdown of these activities. It was designed, built and managed in a thoroughly top-down manner, not reflective of local business practices and modes of organisation, which made it difficult for small companies to move into the park and adapt, and forced many of them to close down.
Thus, as seen from Guiyu, China's project of a circular economy deserves to be questioned. It comes across as parachuted from above, oblivious of local reality, and at least as capable of disrupting existing circular material flows as it is of promoting new ones.