Author: Dorthy Noyes

Click here to view document: Cultures of Waste and Recycling Syllabus

Document Description:

This course explores the notion of the residual: what is left over, useless, unclassifiable. We will explore the customary management of communal resources, both human and material, in scarce-resource societies. We’ll consider processes of symbolic classification through which phenomena can be labelled as out of place or out of phase. We’ll examine the creation of waste (and its converse, deprivation) with the codification of custom in modernity, and look at strategies by which waste is recuperated as a matter of necessity, aesthetics, or ideology. We’ll look at how different kinds of leftover move in and out of systems of value: for example, the labelling of things as “junk” or “antiques,” people as “trash,” or ideas as “folklore.” Finally, we’ll think about the status of residues in social and cultural theory.

Year Published: 2010

File Uploaded: yes- osu_culturesofwasteandrecycling

Website Link: https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/sites/default/files/attached-files/osu_culturesofwasteandrecycling.pdf

Categories included: outreach and education, training and curricular

Keywords included: customary management of communal resources, Colorado, junk, trash, recycling