Short Abstract:

The panel explores social practices of ‘upcycling’ in an extended sense, that is, as the efforts of people to not just revamp materials, but also undo and reimagine the contexts and relations in which these materials exist.

Long Abstract:

This panel brings together researchers concerned with ‘upcycling’ in an extended sense. We consider upcycling as a set of material and cultural practices through which people transform materials and reimagine the contexts and relations in which materials come to exist. Upcycling is considered to be different from recycling in that practitioners mobilize a certain degree of creativity and technical innovation to imbue useless things with new value and beauty. However, assessments of what counts as added value (the qualitative difference of the upcycled product) are never purely technical and do not exist as neutral judgements. Rather, they involve larger imaginations of what the material transformation is supposed to bring about, such as emancipatory effects, just labor conditions, or environmental improvement. Panelists are invited to show how upcycling unfolds through the properties of materials and cultural norms. They might consider, for example, the new social roles of rubble left after war, invasive plants brought by colonialists, or inundations of second-hand clothes. We invite panelists to reflect on how these cases show how upcycling is not simply a material transformation but how it also contributes to larger processes of revaluation, by pouring the traces of a brutal or undesired past into new forms, new objects and new uses. Submitted papers might contribute to current debates within the anthropology of waste and repair, the commons, value/valuation, and design anthropology.

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