Economies of Recycling

Catherine Alexander is a professor of anthropology at Durham University.Joshua Reno is an assistant professor of anthropology at Binghamton University.

• Introduction - Catherine Alexander and Joshua RenoSection One: Global waste flows1. Shoddy rags and relief blankets: perceptions of textile recycling in north India - Lucy Norris2. Death, the Phoenix and Pandora: transforming things and values in Bangladesh - Mike Crang, Ni cky Gregson, Farid Ahamed, Raihana Ferdous and Nasreen Akhter3. One cycle to bind them all? Geographies of nuclearity in the uranium fuel cycle - Romain Garcier4. The shadow of the global network: e-waste flows to China - Xin Tong, Jici WangSection Two: The ethics of waste labour5. Devaluing the dirty work: gendered trash work in participatory Dakar - Rosalind Fredericks6. Stitching curtains, grinding plastic: social and material transformation in Buenos Aires - Karen Ann Faulk7. Trash ties: urban politics, economic crisis and Rio de Janeiro's garbage dump - Kathleen M. Millar8. Sympathy and its boundaries: necropolitics, labour and waste on the Hooghly river - Laura BearSection Three: Traces of former lives9. 'No junk for Jesus': redemptive economies and value conversions in Lutheran medical aid - Britt Halvorson10. Evident excess: material deposits and narcotics surveillance in the USA - Joshua Reno11. Remont: works in progress - Catherine AlexanderAfterword - David Graeber

In this superb collection, what had been dismissed as mere waste or simple recycling is found to be immensely productive in the creation of a second tranche of commodities, complex labour relations, new global linkages, the creation of value and highly sophisticated analysis and theory. Only from this point can debate on these topics be genuinely called informed.