Questions for this week: Who does the dirty work of waste removal in major cities in the Global North? What are their experiences like? What forms do their organizations take? How can waste work be used as a form of resistance to dominant economic structures? What strategies can waste workers use to challenge the stigma and inequities they have historically faced? Are these strategies open to all waste workers? What are the limits of this kind of political action?
Readings:
- Royte, Elizabeth. “Dark Angels of Detritus.” In Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash. First edition. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005, 19-31.
- Nagle, Robin. “You are a San Man” and “We Eat Our Own.” In Picking up: On the Streets and behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City. First edition. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013, 105-112, 143-154.
- Tupelo, Ethan. “Revaluing Capitalist Waste Through Worker Ownership.” In Debris of Progress: A Political Ethnography of Critical Infrastructure. University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2022, 69-103.