Living on the margins: dumpster diving for food as a critical practice

Abstract

Dumpster diving for food implies using discarded edibles found in waste containers behind supermarkets, for example. People who voluntarily engage in this activity suggest that it is a form of hands-on social critique. In this article, we use interview materials to describe and conceptualize this practice. The main question we pose is: in what way is voluntary dumpster diving a 'critical practice'? Drawing on the pragmatic sociology of critique, we show how it is a question of an entangled practice in multiple ways: first, dumpster diving is at once a means of contestation and experimentation on the limits of the contemporary form of life and yet simply a way of getting food for free or having fun with friends; second, while being a thoroughly rational endeavour for its practitioners, the activity is simultaneously rife with affect; finally, although dumpster divers are fully aware that they are dependent on the capitalistic form of food supply, the practice allows them to challenge its institutional self-evidences and distance themselves from it.

The gift of waste: The diversity of gift practices among dumpster divers

“…While a couple of interviewees actively espouse anarchism and try to live as far outside the money economy as possible, for the rest dumpster diving is just one practice among the many that make up the fabric of their daily lives. For them, an ethically sound life consists of doing good through the means available and of being aware of the need to make some compromises with the affordances in their surroundings (Lehtonen and Pyyhtinen 2020, 2021).…”

“…It is only in the last couple of decades that it has finally gained significant levels of research interest. Scholars have, for example, examined disposal (Gregson, 2005; Hetherington, 2004), critically confronted the ‘throw-away society’ (Evans, 2012; Husz, 2011), explored the anti-capitalist politics of scrounging and freeganism (Barnard, 2016; Ferrell, 2006); analysed the rubbish society (O’Brien, 2011; Valkonen et al, 2019), treated the politics of value and waste (Reno, 2009), showed how harvesting wastes is a key economic activity in lower-income countries of the Global South (Carenzo, 2016; Gregson and Crang, 2015), reported on how waste may have a capacity for value (Abrahamsson, 2019; Greeson et al 2020; Lepawsky and McNabb, 2010; Lehtonen and Pyyhtinen, 2020; Lehtokunnas and Pyyhtinen 2022), discussed waste in connection with the possibility of inhuman epistemology (Hird 2012), turned their eyes on waste management (Fagan, 2003; Gutberlet et al, 2017; Woolgar and Neyland, 2013; Zapata Campos and Zapata, 2014), examined the ethics of waste (Hawkins, 2001, 2006), studied how the notion of trash and our practices of dealing with it have changed over the years (Strasser, 1999), and connected garbage elimination with the question of order and ways of ordering (Edensor, 2005; Scanlan, 2004).…”

“…Crazy stuff’, one of our interviewees, Sami, says. Dumpster diving is marked with uncertainty: when going out on a dumpster diving tour, one can never know for sure whether one will actually find something to eat and, if so, precisely what it will be (Lehtonen and Pyyhtinen 2020). 2 One has no control over what one finds; it is – or is not – simply there.…”

“…However, whereas scavenging and urban scrounging on skid row, for example, tend to be regarded as dirty and degrading, voluntary dumpster divers associate the practice with excitement and joy rather than shame. Moreover, and importantly, for the practitioners it is a way of carving out a place within capitalism while retaining a critical distance from it (Lehtonen and Pyyhtinen, 2021). People like to go diving in the company of friends and also share their finds, not least because there is much more perfectly edible food to be found in trash bins than one could possibly eat on one's own.…”

Dumpster Diving Threat in Personal Data Leakage Case in Indonesia

“…Scavenger is a person who searches, picks up, takes, collects and looks for waste both individually and in groups, then sold the waste to the collector. Scavengers work to collect used items by crowding unloaded waste of trash trucks, some other scavengers travel around scavenging used items from waste piles (Lehtonen & Pyyhtinen, 2021). Scavengers are not prohibited, but there are limits that govern them.…”