Negotiations and Conflict in the Implementation of a Waste Pickers’ Cooperative: A Sociology of Translation Approach

Abstract

The complexity of converting political options into socially, economically, and environmentally acceptable strategies places collectors of recyclable material and the challenges they experience on the agendas of research in science, technology, and society. This article aims to investigate the negotiations and conflicts that permeated the implementation of a waste pickers’ cooperative and its integration into the municipal solid waste management system. Considering the complexity of the theme, the methodological approach adopted was grounded theory. This method encourages the expansion of knowledge in an area through the connection of theoretical concepts and significant aspects of the actors’ experiences. The techniques applied for data collection included semi-structured interviews, participant observation, document analysis, and informal interviews. The results are based on narratives analyzed from concepts derived from the Sociology of Translation. It was possible to observe the efforts undertaken by multiple actors, sometimes in the construction and other times in the destabilization of a support network for the establishment of a cooperative. The network suffered dissidents and was destabilized by the habits of the original network and by unexpected events, which made the results achieved opposite to desired ones. In the end, the network was not stabilized, and municipal solid waste management was unchanged.

Becoming an entrepreneur in the cooperation and poverty contexts

“…Accordingly, the understanding about how to become a representative is induced by the appropriation of other knowledge types (Charlot et al, 2000). The present study advocates that managing a collective project aimed at being successful in a sharp resource scantiness context (Lima et al, 2010;Ribeiro et al, 2021) is an entrepreneurial effort. This is a challenging role when it comes to managing collective enterprises since it demands a set of typical entrepreneurial skills, such as seizing opportunities, inspiring members to make decisions even at risky situations (Goel and Karri, 2020), fostering mutual positive impact situations (Gava et al, 2021), adopting a given social stance (Miller and Breton-Miller, 2017) and persisting despite likely uncertainties.…”

“…Members both build these organizations and are nurtured by them by sharing visions and actions (Stryjan, 1994). One of the meanings of this context type is found in the actions of those involved in it, which encompass individuals’ commitment and ability to undertake in a collective manner to create successful cooperatives (Jesus and Tiriba, 2003; Ribeiro et al , 2021). Although these entities have a representative, the opinions of all individuals involved in the managerial process are taken into consideration and decisions are jointly made (Banda and Chanda, 2021).…”

“…These factors, in association with collective decision-making and with the support provided by local governments, can help mitigating conflicts (Ribeiro et al , 2021; Singer, 2003). Cooperatives working as formal organizations empower socially excluded individuals to approach stakeholders capable of helping them, such as the government and nongovernmental organizations, as these individuals feel represented and achieve a stronger collective voice (Banda and Chanda, 2021; Coletto and Bisschop, 2017).…”

Associativism Among Urban Waste Pickers in Brazil

“…In addition to the gains in labor relations, there is also a possibility in the cooperatives of forwarding the demands of the city. Thus, cooperatives can be the solution adopted for waste management, so that waste pickers become protagonists of more sustainable development (Ribeiro et al, 2021;Gutberlet, 2021). Boaventura de Sousa Santos points to the political struggles of those 'from below' to overcome absences and make presences emerge.…”

What Does It Mean to Have a Dirty and Informal Job? The Case of Waste Pickers in the Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

“…In still others, analyses focused on the associative and cooperative elements of such practices. From an interpretive point of view, some approaches seemed to prevail over others, namely: (1) the so-called culture of poverty approach, which views the informal waste pickers (WPs) of the Global South as victims of processes of social and economic marginalisation and progressive dispossession, which physically and symbolically bring together subjects rejected by society with objects considered useless [25,30,31]; (2) the politics of the informality approach, which analyses forms of grassroots representation and resistance, developed in the absence of forms of support from the state [24,32,33]; (3) the decent-work approach, which, focusing almost exclusively on collective forms of waste picking, emphasises the attempts of associations and coopera-tives to improve living and working conditions of waste pickers, often in vastly different institutional and cultural contexts [34][35][36][37][38].…”