Marco Armiero

Wasteocene

22min

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The economic history of the 20th century clearly highlights the effects of capitalism: intensely polluting factories, contaminated environments, people and animals whose health is endangered by spills, toxic clouds, and the impossibility of escaping from the system. What many people may not know is that, as capitalism turns into the Wasteocene (the age of waste), this no longer only concerns material waste and polluting chemicals, but also people and communities, which are often victims of their disadvantaged status, of being the ‘them’ as opposed to the ‘us’ of the system and powers-that-be. It is extremely hard to describe these disadvantages and disparities, because the Wasteocene effectively imposes a dominant narrative that is impossible to undermine. It is therefore crucial that we remember the stories and the voices of the outcasts, of the discarded.

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Analysis and key concepts

01.

Waste is not just ‘physical’ rubbish: it is the product of an unbalanced relationship

02.

The Wasteocene era is based on wasting relationships

03.

The pillars of the Wasteocene are the ‘wall’, slow violence, wasting relationships, and pollution

04.

Culture is the only medium that attempts to understand and describe the Wasteocene

05.

There is an ongoing conflict between narratives of power and narratives of waste

06.

The counternarrative is the only way to protect ourselves from power narratives

07.

Local Wasteocenes and the global Wasteocene

08.

Naples is the most striking case of ‘historical’ Wasteocene in Italy

09.

The waste management crisis in Naples was another important crack in the Wasteocene

10.

Commoning relationships are the solution to the Wasteocene

11.

Quotes

12.

Take-home message

01. Waste is not just ‘physical’ rubbish: it is the product of an unbalanced relationship

Waste has become an increasingly hot topic in recent years, with many people wondering: where should we put it all? How can we produce less of it? How should we store hazardous waste? At the same time, however, we are living with the effects of the industrial twentieth century and its production hubs that polluted places and people, releasing toxins into the air, water, and earth that would last forever. The fact is that waste is often perceived as a leftover product of a process: the waste of production and the waste of human activity, both in the form of solid objects and materials, as well as substances, such as liquids and gases, which are released into the environment.

Yet waste is so much more than this. It is also a sociological relationship, whereby some people are the ‘waste’ of a society, an economy, a production cycle, or a system.

Waste is the product of wasting relationships, in other words, of the relationships that, in order to exist, generate waste, be it material (the objects that end up in landfills), environmental (the land that is surrendered to build the landfill), or human (people who are forced to live at the edges of landfills because they do not have sufficient resources to move elsewhere).

02. The Wasteocene era is based on wasting relationships

03. The pillars of the Wasteocene are the ‘wall’, slow violence, wasting relationships, and pollution

04. Culture is the only medium that attempts to understand and describe the Wasteocene

05. There is an ongoing conflict between narratives of power and narratives of waste

06. The counternarrative is the only way to protect ourselves from power narratives

07. Local Wasteocenes and the global Wasteocene

08. Naples is the most striking case of ‘historical’ Wasteocene in Italy

09. The waste management crisis in Naples was another important crack in the Wasteocene

10. Commoning relationships are the solution to the Wasteocene

11. Quotes

12. Take-home message

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Many useful tips to:

Learn more about the era we are living in, and why we are all in it together.
Reflect on geographical, economic, and social disparities.
Analyse power dynamics from a new perspective.
See the networks of relationships that surround us, and that make up the ‘world’, for what they really are.

The author

Marco Armiero is an Italian environmental historian. He currently works at the Environmental Humanities Laboratory of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and has conducted research in the United States, Spain, and Portugal. His studies focus on various areas, including forest resources, migration, privatisation, and traditional sciences and humanities. He is a voice for the lost causes, the rebels, the resistances, and the stories that never get told.

Edition

Publishing house:

Cambridge University Press

Year:

2021

Pages:

ISBN:

978-1108826747