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.