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- Convenors:
-
Luca Rimoldi
(Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca)
Marta Scaglioni (Cà Foscari University of Venice)
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- Discussant:
-
Marco Gardini
(University of Pavia)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Mode:
- Online
- Sessions:
- Thursday 18 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract:
This panel wishes to stimulate the academic debate on waste management in Africa, and welcomes papers inquiring the political, historical, and economical aspects of the social lives of waste. We welcome bottom-up contributions based on fresh ethnographic material on the African continent.
Long Abstract:
This panel wishes to stimulate the academic debate on waste management in Africa, and welcomes papers inquiring the political, historical, and economical aspects of the social lives of waste. Adopting the critical lenses of anthropology, this panel wishes to embrace various themes related to waste production and management in the African continent.
This panel looks for ethnographic research dealing with 1. the material foundation of waste and its varying local cultural and social meanings; the broader imbrication of waste within legal and illegal transnational processes; 2. the work of waste pickers and of people employed in the waste management chain and the influence that their professional path has on their life trajectories and future expectations; 3. the comparative analysis of waste management in large- and medium-sized cities as crucial for the understanding of the effects and impact on the labor market, as well as the intersections between local and global practices and policies; the mapping of formal and informal work practices related to waste.
We welcome bottom-up contributions based on fresh ethnographic material on the African continent, from any scholarly and academic level. Multidisciplinary research and frameworks are particularly appreciated.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 18 July, 2024, -Paper short abstract:
The paper examines the waste-antiquities and their presence in culture. It is based on ongoing ethnographic research in Sudan.
Paper long abstract:
In Sudan, since ancient times, the material remains of the past have served as a particular type of waste. They were sacred objects associated with cultural memory and group identity or reused for mystical rituals; they were brought back to life due to their practical use or sent outside the community's borders, treated as impure. We can also learn about these and other ways of treating and managing this type of waste from the "traditional" beliefs and customs of societies in today's Sudan. These methods, however, have had to change due to disruptions and crises caused by migrations, urbanization, political and ecological turmoils, and ecological disasters. The attitude of site communities towards remnants of the past can be significantly different, but it is far from indifferent. For urban migrants, women, youth and various wanderers, monuments are waste that is creatively reused in the doing and undoing of everyday practices.
The paper examines the relationship between people and ancient remains in modern Sudan. It focuses on waste-antiquities and their presence in culture. It is based on fresh material from ethnographic research linked to ongoing archaeological works in Soba – a city on the outskirts of Khartoum and in the village of Miseeda on the Third Cataract of the Nile. What can we learn from the examples from Sudan on waste management and conceptualization dynamics? Which epistemological, methodological and ethical challenges emerge? What benefits does it bring to build scientific bridges in multidisciplinary research on African waste management?
Paper short abstract:
South Africa's nuclear waste disposal facility, Vaalputs, became operational in 1986. However, local communities and their relation to the facility remains an enduring and understudied instance of nuclear necropolitics.
Paper long abstract:
Apartheid South Africa produced at least six nuclear bombs but dismantled its nuclear weapons programme by 1993 on the eve of the country's first democratic elections. Nuclear waste remains an enduring legacy of the apartheid era's techno-nationalism that fostered the country's nuclear ambitions. The country's only nuclear waste depository, Vaalputs, became operational in 1986. It is located in an arid, isolated and sparsely populated rural area of the country. Original scoping reports for the site predominantly ignored the presence of villages inhabited by, for example, descendants of the Khoi and so-called Coloured (mixed race) people. Moreover, research on these 16 villages and their inhabitants' relation to and engagement on nuclear waste remains scarce. Therefore, the paper intends to address this issue as an instance of nuclear necropolitics and a sacrifice zone. The paper also intends to achieve four objectives, namely to analyse the meaning and origins of Vaalputs, and community views on and engagement with nuclear waste and the nuclear facility. In the third instance, the paper intends to outline the myths and rituals associated with nuclear waste and the site, and the implications thereof. To achieve these objectives, the paper will apply Foucault's notion of biopolitics, Mbembe's notion of necropolitics and Alexis-Martin's notion of nuclear necropolitics.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I present some results of an ethnographic research project I am conducting at the Mbeubeuss rubbish dump, on the outskirts of Dakar. I consider the logistical organisation of waste as a privileged key to understanding the social and political life of waste in contemporary Senegal
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I present some findings from an ethnographic research project I am conducting at the Mbeubeuss rubbish dump, which was built in the 1960s on the outskirts of Dakar, Senegal. Over the years, Mbeubeuss has generated socio-economic relations linked (directly and indirectly) to the treatment of waste, thus contributing significantly to the urbanisation of neighbouring communities and the consolidation of migration flows from rural areas of the country. Moreover, since the 1960s, a community of boudiumane (waste pickers) has lived and worked inside the dump. The logistical organisation and transport of waste to and from the dump is understood here as relational logistics, built and maintained thanks to the friendship and kinship relationships between the waste pickers and other figures in the informal waste market, such as wholesalers or carters. I see this relational logistics as a privileged key to understanding the social and political life of waste in contemporary Senegal.