Your Trash Is Someone's Treasure The Politics of Value at a Michigan Landfill

Reno, Joshua. 2009. Your Trash Is Someone's Treasure The Politics of Value at a Michigan Landfill. Journal of Material Culture, 14(1), pp. 29-46. [Article]

This is the latest version of this item.

[img]
Preview
Text
YOUR_TRASH_-_offprint.pdf - Accepted Version

Download (307kB) | Preview

Abstract or Description

This article discusses scavenging and dumping as alternative approaches to deriving value from rubbish at a large Michigan landfill. Both practices are attuned to the indeterminacy and power of abandoned things, but in different ways. Whereas scavenging relies on acquiring familiarity with an object by getting to know its particular qualities, landfilling and other forms of mass disposal make discards fungible and manipulable by stripping them of their former identities. By way of examining the different ways in which people become invested in the politics of value at the landfill, whether as part of expressions of gender and class or for personal enjoyment, different comportments toward materiality are revealed to have underlying social and moral implications. In particular, it is argued that different approaches to the evaluation of rubbish involve competing understandings of human and material potential.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183508100007

Related URLs:

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Anthropology

Dates:

DateEvent
2009Published

Funders:

Funding bodyFunder IDGrant Number
Alfred P. Sloan FoundationUNSPECIFIED

Item ID:

6177

Date Deposited:

08 Nov 2011 15:44

Last Modified:

29 Apr 2020 15:31

Peer Reviewed:

Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/6177

Available Versions of this Item

View statistics for this item...

Edit Record Edit Record (login required)