Crisis of Waste?

Martin O’Brien is a sociologist who has spent the last twenty years working on public policy – including health and social policy, criminal justice policy and environmental policy. He is the author (with Sue Penna) of Theorising Welfare: Enlightenment and Modern Society (London: Sage, 1998) and editor of several books, including the most recent Integrating and Articulating Environments: A Challenge for Northern and Southern Europe (Swets & Zeitlinger, 2003) as well as numerous articles on social theory, social history and social policy. He is currently a Reader at the Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Central Lancashire, UK.

• Introduction: Rubbish Society? 1. Rubbish Histories 2. Rubbish Literatures 3. Rubbish Industries 4. Rubbish Households 5. Rubbish Relationships 6. Rubbish Idealism 7. Rubbish Materialism. Conclusion: Rubbish Society!

"This is an excellent book. It is well-researched and exceptionally well-written. I particularly like the fact that O'Brien is utterly fearless and critically independent. He writes vigorously and entertainingly and challenges conventional wisdoms at every turn. He knows the literature -- literary, historical, empirical and theoretical -- thoroughly and brings to it an extraordinarily inquiring and critical mind. There have been a few good books on waste, and this one is certainly among the very best of them.... Martin O'Brien has established himself as one of the few sociological authorities on this subject and, on this evidence, he is the very best of them."-Christopher Rootes, Professor of Environmental Politics and Political Sociology, University of Kent"This is an excellent, well written, scholarly and exciting book -- relevant to policy as well as academia... It does more than merely 'filling a gap' between historical studies of waste and more 'technocratic' and environmental debates -- in effect it sets out a whole new way of conceptualising the constitutive role of rubbish in society and as such its intellectual impact is set to ripple out widely across a range of related debates."-Elizabeth Shove, Professor of Sociology, University of Lancaster