Paper short abstract

If decomposition is essential to life then plastic directly challenges life’s processes.This paper explores the temporality of the processes of decomposition from a materialities perspective and considers the novel permanence that plastic manages to embed into the pathways of becoming and transformation.

Paper long abstract

If decomposition is essential to life then plastic directly challenges life's processes.

This paper explores the temporality of the processes of decomposition from a materialities perspective, and considers the novel permanence that plastic manages to embed into the pathways of becoming and transformation. This discussion - like the swirls of multiple micro pieces of plastics in the oceans - circulates notions of nature and culture and supports the problematising of dichotomous thinking that has traditionally been used to describe the world. Following the material life of a substance like plastic one demonstrates that the language of blending, porosity and becoming are more useful to assimilate new materials into human lives.

Ethnographically grounded in rural Kenya and a group of Giriama horticultural pastoralists this paper demonstrates how plastics refusal to decompose sits ambiguously with, and challenges, Giriama ontologies of memory, security and affluence.