Paper short abstract:

Plastic 'contamination' in Kaata, Bolivia comprises a ‘weakening’ of the land and indexical human bodies, intimately connected across scale in cycles of reponsability. Plastic waste entails the concept of modernity, presenting a conceptual transformation in a reciprocal landscape cycling use values.

Paper long abstract:

Contamination in the village of Kaata, highland Bolivia comprises a simultaneous ‘weakening’ of the land as waste is littered onto it, or of the air when it is burnt, and of human bodies that consume the goods these wrappers contain. This is a world in which humans and non-humans are indexical, intimately connected across scale in cycles of ‘reponsability’, but despite this, not one in which consumer waste contamination can be evaded. Young peoples’ desires for goods unobtainable in the subsistence economy of the village continue to drive a process of capitalisation which many villagers believe will end in cataclysm, an uprising of the animate elements to re-balance the cycles of exchange in this reciprocal landscape.Plastic waste and batteries were initially assumed to be fertiliser, like animal waste products, nourishing the land; however government workshops shockingly taught villagers that these substances cannot circulate in the subsistence farming oicos that until recently required no external inputs nor produced anything without a use value. Here the language of 'modernity' is introduced to classify today's world with its useless waste in contrast to the 'natural' past, connoting the end of cycles of sufficiency connecting humans and non-humans in a ceaseless reciprocity of use-values. Plastic often replaces the woven goods synonymous with 'our culture' in this village of textile weavers, whilst batteries power the stereos which young people favour above the traditional music played for the elements and fertility of the land, comprising a key element in the transformation of this Andean 'cosmoscape'.