Waste: Cultural Imaginaries and Materiality

This 3-day PhD course is relevant to PhD students interested in climate change, toxicity, economic systems, religion, ecology, and material culture from a humanities perspective.

This PhD course studies waste from a humanities perspective. It will combine lectures by invited scholars, discussions in the classroom, peer feedback on writings, and waste excursions. Topics covered in the course include theorising waste, the unevenness of toxic materialities, plastics, capitalism and the distribution of waste networks, the incorporation of new materials into everyday lives and how they impact waste imaginaries and waste trajectories. It will also investigate the importance of cultural imaginaries, beliefs, aesthetics, and their effect on the generation and discard of waste. 

As consumption practices rise with growing affluence around the world, humanity faces a growing crisis with increased quantities of waste. This PhD course will explore the cultural imaginaries and materiality of excess and waste. To understand contemporary waste issues, the course will challenge discourses that focus on waste as a problem to be managed through recycling regimes or other forms of waste management. Instead of focusing on waste as a “problem to be managed”, the course will problematise the idea of “waste” by delving deeply into theory and ethnographic accounts over three days in April 2024.

Language: English

ECTS: 3 for participation and paper presentation

Max. number of participants: 20

Registration: Please register no later than 1 February 2024. Register for the course.

Further information: See the 

Read more about the course programme, academic aim, what to prepare and other requirements.

Course organisers and teachers

Trine Brox, Associate Professor, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen.
Saskia Adelle Abrahms-Kavunenko, Postdoc, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen.
Paulina Kolata, Postdoc, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen.

Guest teachers

Gauri Pathak, Associate Professor, School of Culture and Society - India and South Asia Studies, Aarhus University.
Hervé Corvellec, Professor, Department of Service Studies, Lund University.

 

Abrahms-Kavunenko, Saskia 2021. ‘Toward an Anthropology of Plastics’. Journal of Material Culture. (December):1-21. https://doi.org/10.1177/13591835211066808

Abrahms-Kavunenko, Saskia 2022. ‘Zombie Waste, Mummy Materiality: The Undead and the Fate of Mongolian Buddhist Waste.’ In Buddhism and Waste: The Excess, Discard, and Afterlife of Buddhist Consumption, edited by Trine Brox and Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg, 145-166. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350195561.0012

Abrahms-Kavunenko, Saskia and Trine Brox 2022 "Plastic Asia: Material Ambiguities and Cultural Imaginaries". Copenhagen Journal of Asia Studies. Vol 40(1): 5-22. Introduction to special issue Plastic Asia edited by Trine Brox and Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko. https://doi.org/10.22439/cjas.v40i1.6554

Brox, Trine [in press] "Tibetan Buddhism in the Age of Waste". Journal of the American Academy of Religion.

Brox, Trine 2022 "A Framework for Studying Buddhism and Waste". Buddhism and Waste: The Excess, Discard, and Afterlife of Buddhist Consumption. Edited by Trine Brox and Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg. Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Material Religion. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 1-30. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350195561.0006

Calvino, Italo 1974. ‘Leonia’ in Invisible cities. https://youpic.com/story/5138/leonia-invisible-cities-vintage-calvino

Chao, Sophie 2019. ‘The Plastic Cassowary: Problematic “Pets” in West Papua.’ Ethnos. 85, 5: 828-848. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2018.1502798

Corvellec, Hervé 2014. “Recycling food waste into biogas, or how management transforms overflows into flows.’ In Barbara Czarniawska and Orvar Löfgren (eds) Coping with Excess: How Organizations, Communities and Individuals Manage Overflows. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp 154-172. https://doi.org/110.4337/9781782548591.00014

Douny, Laurence 2007. ‘The Materiality of Domestic Waste: The Recycled Cosmology of the Dogon of Mali.’ Journal of Material Culture. 12, 3: 309-331. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183507081897

Hawkins, Gay 2001. "Plastic Bags: Living with Rubbish."  International Journal of Cultural Studies 4 (1):5-23. https://doi.org/10.1177/136787790100400101

Liboiron, Max 2016. "Redefining Pollution and Action: The Matter of Plastics."  Journal of Material Culture 21 (1):87-110. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183515622966

Moore, Sarah A. 2012. "Garbage Matters: Concepts in New Geographies of Waste." Progress in Human Geography 36 (6): 780-99. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132512437077

Pathak, Gauri 2023. "‘Plastic Pollution’ and Plastics as Pollution in Mumbai, India," Ethnos, 88 (1): 167-186. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2020.1839116

Pathak, Gauri and Mark Nichter 2021. "Ecocommunicability, Citizenship, and Discourses on Plastic Control in India." Geoforum 125 (2021):132-139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.04.027

Reno, Joshua 2015. "Waste and Waste Management." The Annual Review of Anthropology (44): 557-72. https://orb.binghamton.edu/anthropology_fac/1

Siniawer, Eiko Maruko 2018. “Introduction” in Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press: 1-15. https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501725845.001.0001

Spring, Charlotte, Tammara Soma, Jordon Lazell, Christian Reynolds 2020. ‘Food Waste: An introduction to contemporary food waste studies’, in Routledge Handbook of Food Waste. Routledge: 1-20. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429462795-1/food-waste-charlotte-spring-tammara-soma-jordon-lazell-christian-reynolds

Svingstedt, Anette, Hervé Corvellec and Emma Samsioe. 2020. "The Normality of Industrial and Commercial Waste: Economic, Technical and Organisational Barriers to Waste Prevention." Detritus: Multidisciplinary Journal for Waste Resources and Residues. 13: 3-11. https://doi.org/10.31025/2611-4135/2020.14035

Soma, Tammara 2017. Gifting, Ridding and the “Everyday Mundane”: the role of class and privilege in food waste generation in Indonesia, Local Environment, 22 (12): 1444-1460, https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2017.1357689