Technics of Labor: Productivism, Expertise, and Solid Waste Management in a Public‐Private Partnership

Abstract

In Lahore, a public‐private partnership has been formed to replace the Solid Waste Management (SWM) Department. Along with technological and managerial interventions into the labor process, this partnership has also brought in a class of professionals whose expertise is viewed as being essential to improving solid waste management for the city. Nevertheless, a labor force of sanitation workers and supervisors from the municipal SWM Department remain the primary means by which discarded materials are actually taken away across the urban landscape. This article examines how technical and productivist frameworks were brought to bear—especially as professionals enacted their expertise—upon the labor process by which waste materials are disposed of in the city. In doing so, this article argues that in moments of institutional and technological transition, the instability of work as a category of action opens it up to potential revaluation. Not only does this approach make clear the frameworks, whether technical or productivist, through which forms of work or labor get revalued, it also allows us to trace a politics of work beyond such frameworks.

Invisible experts: The curious case of the book knower in Iran

“…Furthermore, there is no universal definition of work , nor is there a distinct boundary between work and labor—such as one being informal and the other being contingent on a wage. Rather, conceptions of work and labor are highly dependent on the broader social, cultural, and political context and can shift over time (Butt, 2020; Butt, Hayat, and Sargent, 2020; Kantor, 2020; Sargent, 2020). Is it possible then that certain forms of elite labor cannot be perceived as labor in the Iranian context?…”