Knowing Waste: Towards an Inhuman Epistemology

Hird, Myra J.

doi:10.1080/02691728.2012.727195

Cited by 95 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 32 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Waste mobility scholars have effectively demonstrated how the different meanings and values that waste engenders articulate with technological opportunity to establish and propel circulation among regulatory and economic value regimes (Clapp, 2002;Brownell, 2011;Grant and Oteng-Ababio, 2012;Crang et al, 2013). MSW in particular is both indeterminate and heterogeneous (Hird, 2012). Waste infrastructure's multiple valences contribute ontological opportunities that serve political purposes (Harvey, 2017;Behrsin, 2019).…”

Section: Expanding Upe's Toolkit: Territorialization and Socioecologimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Waste infrastructure's multiple valences contribute ontological opportunities that serve political purposes (Harvey, 2017;Behrsin, 2019). MSW in particular is both indeterminate and heterogeneous (Hird, 2012). As Gille (2013: 5) argues, its indeterminacy 'can be used to point out the limits of waste management experts' haughty reassurances … but it can also undermine … victims of toxic landfills'.…”

Section: Expanding Upe's Toolkit: Territorialization and Socioecologimentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Contaminant, Commodity and Fuel: A Multi‐sited Study of Waste's roles in Urban Transformations from Italy to Austria

Behrsin¹,

Rosa²

2020

Int J Urban Regional Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article traces the flow of municipal solid waste from southern Italy through a waste-to-energy facility and district heating system in Austria, examining the roles that waste's transformation from contaminant to commodity to fuel plays in interconnected, distributed, and contested urbanization processes. It contends that, while metabolic circulation hides socioecological costs in one place to facilitate valorization in another, specific spatial configurations emerge through territorialization--of waste economies, in this case--providing the spatial base to realize metabolic flows and to anchor political narratives. A decisive effect is that certain patterns of urbanization become locked-in, impeding alternative metabolic transitions and spatial configurations. Attending to the coproduction of three sites--Naples, Italy; Zwentendorf, Austria; and St Pölten, Austria--through the circulation and transformation of waste and energy the article provides an empirical multi-sited case study of a political ecology of urbanization.

show abstract

Section: Expanding Upe's Toolkit: Territorialization and Socioecologimentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Expanding Upe's Toolkit: Territorialization and Socioecologimentioning

confidence: 99%

Contaminant, Commodity and Fuel: A Multi‐sited Study of Waste's roles in Urban Transformations from Italy to Austria

Behrsin¹,

Rosa²

2020

Int J Urban Regional Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This theoretical perspective connects to ecology‐based approaches by drawing attention to the ways in which material flows termed “waste” are entangled within complex socio‐ecological systems (Lankford ), but stresses how specific characteristics of material flows matter differently to different actors. Like the scholarship emphasizing political and biopolitical dimensions of waste, this perspective also treats waste as relational and constitutive of society and ecology, but it differs in its emphasis on nonhuman agency and also in its treatment of waste materials as indeterminate and not necessarily knowable (Hird ).…”

Section: Geographies Of Wastementioning

confidence: 99%

Material, Political, and Biopolitical Dimensions of “Waste” in California Water Law

Cantor

2017

Antipode

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

California's state constitution prohibits the “wasteful” use of water; however, waste is subjective and context dependent. This paper considers political, biopolitical, and material dimensions of waste, focusing on the role of legal processes and institutions. The paper examines a case involving legal accusations of “waste and unreasonable use” of water by the Imperial Irrigation District in Imperial County, California. The determination that water was being “wasted” justified the transfer of water from agricultural to urban areas. However, defining these flows of water as a waste neglected water's complexity and relationality, and the enclosure of a “paracommons” threatens to bring about negative environmental and public health consequences. The paper shows that the project of discursively labeling certain material resource flows as waste and re‐allocating these resources to correct this moral and economic failure relies upon legal processes, and carries political and biopolitical implications.

show abstract

“…Astrida Neimanis' (2013) work on developing feminist subjectivity by thinking through bodies of water -which we cannot fully know -is also worth mentioning. Myra Hird (2012) has shown what feminist theory has to offer in order to develop an understanding of the epistemological and ethical implications of knowing waste. I also find great inspiration in feminist researchers' attempts to make feminism relevant for ecological concerns as well as making environmental-oriented scholarships aware of what feminist theory has to offer (MacGregor 2009;Macgregor 2013;Oppermann 2013;Åsberg 2013;Neimanis, Åsberg, and Hedrén 2015).…”

Section: Research Context Iii: Feminist Environmental Humanitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability for Whom? : The Politics of Imagining Environmental Change in Education

Sjögren

2016

Linköping Studies in Arts and Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Global initiatives regarding environmental change have increasingly become part of political agendas and of our collective imagination. In order to form sustainable societies, education is considered crucial by organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union. But how is the notion of sustainability imagined and formed in educational practices? What does sustainability make possible, and whom does it involve? These critical questions are not often asked in educational research on sustainability.This study suggests that the absence of critical questions in sustainability education is part of a contemporary post-political framing of environmental issues. In order to re-politicize sustainability in education, this study critically explores how education-as an institution and a practice that is supposed to foster humans-responds to environmental change. The aim is to explore how sustainability is formed in education, and to discuss how these formations relate to ideas of what education is, and whom it is for. This interdisciplinary study uses theories and concepts from cultural studies, feminist theory, political theory, and philosophy of education to study imaginaries of the unknown, nonhuman world in the context of education. The focus of the empirical investigation is on teacher education in Sweden, and more precisely on those responsible for teaching the future generations of teachers -the teacher instructors. With help from empirical findings from focus groups, the study asks questions about the ontological, political, and ethical potential and risk of bringing the unknown Other into education.

show abstract

Knowing Waste: Towards an Inhuman Epistemology

Cited by 95 publications

References 32 publications

Contaminant, Commodity and Fuel: A Multi‐sited Study of Waste's roles in Urban Transformations from Italy to Austria

Contaminant, Commodity and Fuel: A Multi‐sited Study of Waste's roles in Urban Transformations from Italy to Austria

Material, Political, and Biopolitical Dimensions of “Waste” in California Water Law

Sustainability for Whom? : The Politics of Imagining Environmental Change in Education

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About