Call for Papers: WASTE

An anthropological engagement with waste begins, of course, with Mary Douglas’

(2003[1966]) pivotal insight that dirt or waste is not an objective quality of things in the
world. Waste is never waste in itself, but a product of our impulse to order and classify. In
Douglas’ structuralist-symbolic approach, acts of disposal give expression to a symbolic
order. More recent approaches to waste have brought its materiality further into focus.
Productive lines of inquiry are, for instance, to explore how objects may lose and later regain
value or become a new source of profit (Hawkins and Muecke 2002) or to examine how waste
materialities affect the world (Reno 2015). Reiterating Douglas’ (2003[1966]: 2) statement
that ‘[t]here is no such thing as absolute dirt’, we consider waste, waste management, and
wastefulness as phenomena that can best be studied by considering both their material
realities and metaphorical dimensions. As the proliferation of discarded face masks during the
COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates, even the most feeble litter may be examined for its
symbolic, material, economic, political, or spatiotemporal qualities.
For the upcoming issue of Etnofoor, we invite authors to engage with questions
revolving around different types of waste. First, we call for reflections on the superfluous, on
people or things that are considered to be surplus, redundant or excessive. Zygmunt Bauman’s
Wasted Lives (2004) is perhaps the clearest example of scholarly work that examines the
potential of human lives to become ‘waste’, arguing that modernization produces excess
populations that have no place in the global economic system. Yet here we might also think of
the opposite, of scrutinizing wastefulness, abundance, and consumptive lifestyles.
Second, we invite explorations of the disposed and the discarded that deal more
directly with waste management. Where do waste streams originate and end? Who produces
waste, who processes it, where is waste shipped to, dumped or burned, and how should we
understand such political economies of waste? Yet the old maxim also tells us that one
person’s trash is another’s treasure. So how are practices such as recycling, repair,
maintenance, reuse, or dumpster diving reflective of ideas on waste and value?
Third, we are interested in analyses of remnants, of that which remains. Here, we think
of military waste such as mines, bunkers, ruins, wastelands, and other remnants of war that
continue to produce military environments for people who live in and around them (Kim
2016). Authors might also consider various forms of bodily waste, such as corpses and the
ritualized disposal of human remains, or the body parts, blood, organs, and other residues of
medical treatments that might be discarded without the same careful decorum. And, beyond
the notion of solid waste, how to think of the burgeoning amount of digital traces, or ‘post-
mortem data’ (Kneese 2019), that people leave behind in an online universe, even after their
own lives have ended?
Etnofoor invites authors that engage with these or related issues, either in the form of
an ethnographic case study or from a methodological or theoretical perspective, to submit an
abstract of no more than 200 words to editors@etnofoor.nl before March 8, 2021. We also
welcome creative contributions, such as photo essays. The deadline for authors of accepted
abstracts to submit their full papers is June 15, 2021.

References
Bauman, Zygmunt
2004 Wasted Lives: Modernity and its Outcasts. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Douglas, Mary
2003[1966] Purity and danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London:
Routledge.

Hawkins, Gay and Stephen Muecke.

2002 Culture and Waste: The Creation and Destruction of Value. Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers.

Kim, Eleana J.
2016 Toward an Anthropology of Landmines: Rogue Infrastructure and Military Waste in
the Korean DMZ. Cultural Anthropology 31(2): 162-187.

Kneese, Tamara
2019 Networked Heirlooms: The Affective and Financial Logics of Digital Estate Planning.
Cultural Studies 33(2): 297-324.

Reno, Joshua
2015 Waste and Waste Management. Annual Review of Anthropology 44(1): 557-572.