Author name: Ethan Tupelo

Disposability

Questions for this week: What is disposability, and how did the concept emerge? What makes an object disposable? In what ways do our political and economic systems treat people as waste? How can we better study political and economic power from the perspective of the waste of the political economy? Readings:

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Colonialism, pollution, productivity

Questions for this week: What ways of conceiving of the natural world allow us to treat materials or locations as waste? Why and how are spaces like rivers and landfills ‘sinks’ for waste, places that can unproblematically absorb a set amount of waste? In what ways have modern scientific practices both helped to prevent the

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‘Sanitary’ landfills, wastewater, and city structure

Questions for this week: How did ‘sanitary landfills’ develop? What are landfills primarily composed of? Why don’t things biodegrade much in landfills? What environmental risks do they pose? What waste challenges did Boston and other similar cities face in the early industrial era? How has waste (literally) shaped Boston? Readings:

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Waste Workers

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

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Shit

Questions this week: What’s more ‘natural’ than expelling shit, our body’s waste? Has this substance always been seen as waste? What can examining the political histories of our shit removal infrastructures tell us about common assumptions around cleanliness, poverty and wealth, and race? Is our disgust around shit, and the speed we try to get

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