how the socio-materiality of waste shapes the conditions for markets johan hultman hervé corvellec...
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How the socio-materiality of waste shapes the conditions for markets
Johan HultmanHervé Corvellec
Department of Service StudiesLund UniversitySweden
Paper presented at the ESRN conference ’Embeddedness and Beyond’, October 27, Moscow
1. Explain the socio-materiality of waste
2. Refl ect over how waste socio-materialities shape the conditions for markets
Aims of the presentation
Absence – presence
Waste is often understood as a problem to be managed – make it disappear!
But ’waste’ is a category of material assemblages – just like products and services – and the presence of waste in society shapes social life.
The socio-materiality of waste
How waste is defined and dealt with, and the effects this has for the economy and the environment
Waste demands bodily engagement: it smells, it needs space, it needs to be organized – the materiality of waste calls for attention all the time
But what is waste?
A material category that is actively produced:
”…what happens in society is that people go to work, to school, to their businesses. And there material is produced. And this material we have decided to mix in a container, and then we call it waste. Because waste does not exist. There is no waste! There is only material! [But] into the container you put plastic. But plastic is not waste. Plastic is plastic. And you put in wood. And wood is wood. But we invented a word for it. And we call it waste.”
(waste management company respondent, 2011)
Growth – scarcity
Sweden is one example of a capitalist consumer society aimed at:
1. economic growth, but also…2. …embedded in discourses of material scarcity and global environmental problems
Problem Solution
Wasting materials environmentally wrong
Define waste as a resource instead of a problem
All economic objects are thoroughly cultural /…/ (David Stark, 2009)
Economy – environment
Re-defining the socio-materiality of waste
Sending waste to a landfill: make it disappear!=
A dissociative waste socio-materiality that demands no particular engagement from waste producers (households, businesses, organizations, etc)
Re-defining the socio-materiality of waste
Facilitating the sorting of waste at the point of its generation (e.g. multi-fraction waste bins) in order to make re-use and recycling possible
=An associative waste socio-materiality that demands bodily engagement and new spatial arrangements among waste producers
The waste hierarchy
Waste socio-materialities
Dissociative soc.-mat.
Waste socio-materialities
Dissociative soc.-mat.
Associative soc.-mat.
Waste socio-materialities
Dissociative soc.-mat.
Associative soc.-mat.
Reflexive soc.-mat.
Waste hierarchy economics
Recovery (waste-to-energy through incineration), recycling and re-use make waste into an economic object. This encourages growth and increased material circulation.
Avoidance (not to produce waste at all) encourages new design practices, thrift, maintenance and repair. This means decreased material circulation.
The conditions for markets
Through its contradictory maximization-minimization logic, the waste hierarchy defines the socio-materiality of waste differently
The conditions for markets
Through its contradictory maximization-minimization logics, the waste hierarchy defines the socio-materiality of waste differently
Dissociative, associative and reflexive waste socio-materialities fix the relation between economy and environment in different ways
The conditions for markets
Through its contradictory maximization-minimization logics, the waste hierarchy defines the socio-materiality of waste differently
Dissociative, associative and reflexive waste socio-materialities fix the relation between economy and environment in different ways
How economy and environment are fixed in relation to each other shape the conditions for markets
Dissociative waste markets
Associative waste markets
For mixed materials (to make incineration facilities work optimally)
For energy and district heating
For increasingly sorted materials
For infrastructures and services that facilitate sorting
Brokers’ services for materials
For example…
…and reflexive waste markets
For infrastructures that facilitate avoidanceFor services that results in avoidance of
waste in production (fx molecular-level design)
For services that decrease the intensity of consumption (fx personal environmental coach)
For repair and maintenance skills
Conclusions
Waste socio-materiality:
…is economically performative…shapes the conditions for markets…might affect the politics of consumption by
encouraging reflection among waste producers
