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Paper short abstract:

This paper aims at showing the results of a field research conducted in Casablanca (Morocco) in 2017. It focuses on the social life of waste, intended as event that produces exchange and sharing processes between people, places and objects, through formal and informal practices.

Paper long abstract:

After a 9 months field research period conducted in Morocco, this paper aims to set out the main points of the social life of urban waste studied in Casablanca. Waste is intended as an event that produces exchange and sharing processes between people, places and objects, through formal and informal practices, spatially and temporally defined. After a fundamental analysis of the administrative, political and legal aspects of waste management system in Morocco, we will focus on the main characteristics and the main social actors involved in the current waste-disposal system in Morocco and more specifically in Casablanca.

The ethnographic study will illustrate three main "phases" of the social life of waste, interpreted according to the perspective and practices of central social actors:

- the waste-recovery phase, realised by the so-called "bou'âra" or "chiffonniers" (informal waste-pickers);

- the storage of the materials collected in the "goulssa", collection and selection waste-storage centres, usually located in the suburbs and owned by wholesalers and semi-wholesalers;

- the pilot project of an NGO called Enda Maghreb, based in Rabat, aimed at the integration into the formal economic sphere of the waste management system of the "bou'âra".

Particular attention will be devoted to the interpretation of the value that waste assumes from the points of view of different actors involved in the waste management chain in Casablanca. Finally, it will be essential to take into account the role of a fourth social actor, the institutions, which "behind the scenes" seem to indirectly pilot the presented scenario.