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Paper short abstract:

Set in a Warlpiri community of central Australia, this paper looks at the interface between Warlpiri domestic practices related to rubbish and materiality, and an intrusive State agenda stressing a particular kind of tidiness and order.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on 19 months of fieldwork at a Warlpiri community in central Australia, in this paper I look at conceptions of rubbish verses thingness, and related practices of discarding and cleaning. In the Warlpiri context, the road from being a 'thing' of use or value to rubbish at the tip is neither linear, nor unidirectional. Here, an unambiguous act of discarding a thing is less frequent than an in-situ leaving, or setting aside, which suspends items between categories of 'actual rubbish' and potential re-use - a tin lid reclaimed to serve as a knife; a meat tray reused as a plate, and so on. Warlpiri domestic spaces are often scattered with items that may or may not be 'rubbish', the determination of which may depend on who is doing the looking. In this paper, my analysis turns on the interface between what locals would call a "yapa way" (yapa meaning Warlpiri or more generally Aboriginal person) of living in houses and with things, and a State agenda of 'tidy yards', monthly council audits of domestic litter and waste, and regular house inspections, all informed by unambiguous determiners of aesthetic desirability. To push at broader Western logics, I use insights from the Warlpiri life-world to explore other ways of seeing and categorising material things, and other logics informing material practices.