Questions for this week: Why is there so much waste in the contemporary world? How did people behave in this same area just a few hundred years ago? How is this tied in with concepts of economic development and inequality? What’s preventing us from taking care of objects in a similar way today? What does focusing on the concept of repair reveal about how the world functions or falls apart? Why has so much environmental discourse in the last few decades focused on individual responsibility? What are the histories behind this? How does focusing on the individual, like we have for most of this course so far, obscure the potential greater responsibility of larger institutions and social structures?
Readings:
Graham, S., and N. Thrift. “Out of Order: Understanding Repair and Maintenance.” Theory, Culture & Society 24, no. 3 (May 1, 2007): 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276407075954.
Strasser, Susan. “The Stewardship of Objects.” In Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, 1st ed. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999, 23-72.
Maniates, Michael F. “Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World?” Global Environmental Politics 1, no. 3 (2001): 31–52. https://doi.org/10.1162/152638001316881395