Apologies for Cross-Posting
Call for papers, Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, New York
February 24-28, 2012
Geographies of Waste
Session Organised by: Stewart Barr (University of Exeter), Steve Guilbert (Kingston University), Alan Metcalfe (University of Portsmouth), Mark Riley (University of Liverpool), Guy Robinson (University of South Australia), Terry Tudor (University of Northampton)
Contact: [log in to unmask] Extended deadline: Please Send titles and abstracts by 21st Sept
Sponsored by Cultural Geography and Energy and Environment Specialty Groups
Only a decade ago, one could legitimately make reference to the invisibility of waste; this is no longer the case. Culturally, politically and economically waste was the remainder that remained (all but) invisible. This can be seen when considering household waste, the most visible form of waste to most people. In the UK households would discard unwanted materials to a single bin, which councils collected weekly and treated as an amorphous mass, burying or sometimes burning. Few councils collected recyclables separately as most recycling was done by individuals and households who took glass, paper and the like to bring banks. Yet recently waste has become visible in several ways. Its material presence has increased as bins of different colours, shapes and sizes have proliferated in our yards and homes, streets and workplaces, a materiality that makes visible the newfound zeal in encouraging those disposing to sort and separate. Media reports have correspondingly grown as stories are told of how changes to bins and their collection endangers health, of excessive rules and of ‘snooping’ councils. Finally, waste has been made increasingly visible bureaucratically as municipal wastes in particular are counted, analysed and measured, their myriad routes and destinations monitored.
This shift towards visibility has also been witnessed within the academy. Until that point social scientists had focused on production and consumption, consequently failing to recognise the importance of waste as an issue (O’Brien 1999a, 1999b). The last decade though has witnessed a surge in concern with and discussion of waste matters. There have been examinations of the economics of different methods, technologies and uses of waste, such as energy production (Dijkgraaf and Vollebergh, 2004; Rabl et al, 2008; Miranda and Hale, 1997); the meaning and materiality of waste and how these are historically and spatially located (Cooper, 2008, 2009, 2010; Clarke, 2007; Gille, 2007; Laporte, 2000; Melosi, 2005; O’Brien, 2008; Strasser, 1999); the link between waste and embodiment whether positive (Hawkins, 2006) or toxic (Gregson et al, 2010); the rise of recycling, its links to household attitudes and behaviours and wider environmental concerns (Barr 2007; Barr et al, 2005; O’Shea et al, 2011; Robinson and Read, 2005); practices of disposal and processes of defining waste (Cwerner and Metcalfe, 2003; Gregson et al, 2007a, 2007b, 2009b); the centrality of value and values to waste (Hawkins, 2006; Hawkins and Meucke, 2003; O’Brien, 1999a, Scanlan, 2005); and the issue of locating waste facilities, governance, the connection to wider environmental concerns and to environmental justice (Davies, 2009; Martuzzi et al, 2010; Miranda et al, 2000)
This session seeks to engage with and provide a forum for this range of recent research in and theorisation of the geographies of waste. We are interested in making this a broad session with researchers from different fields talking to one another. We are therefore interested in receiving proposals from
· a range of intellectual traditions utilising a range of methods and with a diversity of goals (e.g. economics, social psychology, social and cultural and policy studies as well as multi/inter-disciplinary),
· a range of scales and spatial contexts, from studies considering an array of waste streams (e.g. household, industrial, agricultural, and hazardous),
· those who have considered recycling, re-use and reduction as well as rubbish,
· researchers who have considered waste as a resource, from the production of energy to its value in politics and market creation
· and from academics exploring waste as an activity, a moral issue and as a material product.
We are interested in bringing researchers together to explore current themes and interests and to provide a forum for discussion across intellectual divides within Geography and beyond.
Please send a title and 250 word abstract to [log in to unmask] by 21st September.
References:
Barr, S.W. (2007). Factors influencing environmental attitudes and behaviors: a UK case study of household waste management. Environment and Behavior, 39(4), 435-473
Barr, S.W., Gilg, A.W., Ford, N.J. (2005). Defining the multi-dimensional aspects of household waste management: a study of reported behaviour in Devon. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 45(2), 172-192.
Clark, John FM, ‘“The incineration of refuse is beautiful”: Torquay and the introduction of municipal refuse destructors’, Urban History, 34 (August 2007), 254-76
Cooper, Tim (2010) 'Burying the 'refuse revolution': The rise of controlled tipping in Britain 1920-1960', Environment and Planning A, vol. 42, no. 5, 1033-1048
Cooper, Tim (2009) 'War on waste? The politics of waste and recycling in post-war Britain, 1950-1975', Capitalism Nature Socialism, vol. 20, no. 4, 2009, 53-72
Cooper, Tim (2008) 'Challenging the 'refuse revolution': War, waste and the rediscovery of recycling, 1900-1950', Historical Research, vol. 81, no. 214, 2008, 710-731
Cwerner, Saulo B and Alan Metcalfe (2003) Storage and Clutter: Discourses and Practices of Order in the Domestic World, Journal of Design History. 16 (3) 229-240
Davies, Anna R. (2008) The Geographies of Garbage Governance: interventions, interactions and outcomes. Ashgate, Aldershot
Dijkgraaf, Elbert and Herman R.J. Vollebergh (2004) ‘Burn or bury? A social cost comparison of final waste disposal methods’ Ecological Economics 50 (3-4): 233-247
Gille, Zsuzsa (2007) From the Cult of Waste to the Trash-Heap of History: The Politics of Waste in Socialist and Post-Socialist Hungary, Indiana University Press, Bloomington
Gregson, N, Metcalfe A and Crewe L (2007a) Identity, Mobility and the Throwaway Society Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25(4) 682 – 700
Gregson, N, Metcalfe A and Crewe L (2007b) Moving Things Along: The conduits and practices of divestment in consumption. Transaction of the Institute of British Geographers 32(2), 187-200
Gregson, N., Metcalfe, A. and Crewe, L. (2009b) Practices of Object Maintenance and Repair: how consumers attend to consumer objects within the home. Journal of Consumer Culture, 9(2) 248-272
Gregson, N., Watkins, H. and Calestani, M. (2010). Inextinguishable fibres: demolition and the vital materialisms of asbestos. Environment and Planning A, 42(5), 1065-1083 Hawkins and Meucke, 2003;
Hawkins, Gay (2006) The Ethics of Waste: How We Relate to Rubbish, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney
Hawkins, Gay and Stephen Meucke (Eds) (2003) Culture and Waste: The Creation and Destruction of Value, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MD
Laporte, Dominique (2000 [1978]) The History of Shit, Cambridge MA: MIT Press
Martuzzi, Marco, Francesco Mitis and Francesco Forastiere (2010) ‘Inequalities, inequities, environmental justice in waste management and health’, Euopean Journal of Public Health (2010) 20 (1): 21-26
Melosi, Martin V. (2005) Garbage in the Cities: Refuse, Reform and the Environment (Revised Edition). University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh
Miranda, M.L. & Hale, B. (1997) ‘Waste not, want not: the private and social costs of waste-to-energy production’, Energy Policy, 25(6), 587-600
Miranda, Marie Lynn, James N. Miller and Timothy L. Jacobs (2000) ‘Talking Trash about Landfills: Using Quantitative Scoring Schemes in Landfill Siting Processes’, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management,.19 (1): 3–22
O’Brien, Martin (1999a) ‘Rubbish Values: Reflections on the political economy of waste’, Science as Culture, 8(3): 269-295
O’Brien, Martin (1999b) ‘Rubbish Power: towards a sociology of the rubbish society’, in Consuming Cultures Eds Jeff Hearn and Sasha Roseneil, MacMillan, Basingstoke, Hants pp. 262-277 (referenced in Bulkeley and Gregson)
O’Shea, Lucy, Andrew Abbott and Shasikanta Nandeibam (2011) ‘Examining the variation in household recycling rates across the UK’ http://www.webmeets.com/files/papers/EAERE/2011/94/recycling1.pdf
Rabl, Ari, Joseph V. Spadaro, Assaad Zoughaib (2008) ‘Environmental impacts and costs of solid waste: a comparison of landfill and incineration’, Waste Management & Research, 26: 147–162
Robinson, G.M. and Read, A.D., (2005). Recycling behaviour in a London Borough: results from large-scale household surveys, Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 45, pp.70-83
Scanlan, John (2005) On Garbage Reaktion Books, London
Strasser, Susan (2000) Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, Owl Books, New York