Short Abstract

This panel develops "the ethics of circularity" as a device for thinking through diverse ethico-political possibilities and sensibilities involved in circulating materials. We investigate how waste, value, and care are negotiated within and between circular systems of production, repair, and reuse.

Long Abstract

This panel seeks to develop "the ethics of circularity" as a device for thinking through diverse ethical sensibilities and sociopolitical possibilities entailed in circulating materials – beyond a moralised dualism between circular and linear, efficiency and inefficiency. The panel strives to foster a more plural and situated understanding of circularity across contexts. In an era of multiple uncertainties, technological fixes, such as the circular economy model, are put forward to eliminate wastes, extend product lifespans, and enhance resource efficiency. At the heart of these fixes lies a moralised conceit of growth underscored by a normative circular imaginary. Often, it materialises into techno-optimistic innovations in mediating waste’s value transformation across (circular) logistical chains, from the production and design of products to their disposal and recovery.

We aim to investigate variegated ethics of circularity by examining how waste, value, and care are negotiated within and between circular systems of production, repair, and reuse. Circularity is often promoted as a techno-moral solution to environmental crises, yet its implementation depends on complex networks of human and nonhuman actors. We invite ethnographic contributions from different geopolitical and socioeconomic settings that engage with the mediating roles of labour, infrastructure, and technology, such as recycling facilities and repair economies to data-driven platforms and material recovery systems. We ask: How is the imaginary of circularity localised and reconfigured on the ground? How may we discard well and circulate materials ethico-onto-epistemologically? What are the already existing and speculative forms of ethics in imagining the otherwise possibilities of circularities?

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