Social reproduction of waste

Social reproduction is central to everyday life making. It is the ‘hidden abode’, the unseen labour, which is comprised within every commodity and service, dispersed across the global supply chains, production processes and consumer markets. This paper aims to study how the concept and the materiality of social reproduction is also central to the ‘endings’ of commodities. Waste in the 21st century has undergone an image make-over. From something that had to be hidden away in the dumps, often located in the outskirts of cities, waste has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. While the value of waste has risen as it is increasingly being commodified, the labour involved in waste picking has consistently been undervalued. Socio-economically marginalised and racialised groups are often overrepresented in low-income informal workspaces such as waste picking. For example, waste collection and sanitation work in India is predominantly carried out by lower-caste groups. Recent studies on informal waste management in Europe highlight that many Roma people and groups of racialised migrants depend on collecting and selling waste to build livelihoods. In many contexts, such as in India, Argentina and South Africa, waste pickers have also mobilised for their rights and have demanded municipalities to recognise the ecological labour carried out by them. Following the transnational routes of how waste is transported from the Global North to the Global South also illustrates the ongoing colonial dynamics. Within the domestic sphere, handling waste becomes gendered as women are more likely to carry out social reproductive tasks such as cooking, cleaning and care. Thus, waste as an analytical entry point enables us to observe the tensions between capitalism and environment as well as the intersectional and colonial hierarchies embedded in modern economies. In this paper, I would like to explore how the theoretical framework of social reproduction can be operationalised to include waste picking as an aspect of ‘ecological care’ that is central for our everyday life making. I will build on the emerging scholarships on waste, including anthropological studies and intersectional feminist literature on waste. I will also draw upon my own previous research on traders of used-clothes, in Delhi, India, and my current ongoing study on the electronic archive of waste pickers’ cooperative in Pune, India. The main research question which guides this paper is: how can we understand the labour involved in waste picking through the theoretical framework of social reproduction?