An anthropologist view of recycling
Transcript of An anthropologist view of recycling
Expiriences and Methogology
M : Participant Observation, “research and action”
fieldwork and documental research
• Reasearch in Migration and food : Barcelona 2003-2010
• Organization and participation of workshops with plastic bags and
bottles and paper
• “Ethnoyoutobegrafía” and google docs view
• Participation in events and exhibitions of Drap Art, 15-M, Fiestas
de Gràcia, etc.
• Aply Lingüistics in teaching methods.
• Publication of articles and conferences about Antrhopology an
Recycling
From ciberspace to the reality and viceversa
• Plastic Bag Crafts
• Find many craft projects using plastic bags. A great way to craft green and recycle plastic
grocery and (clean) garbage bags.
• Dog Bed
• 'Just', a visitor, shares these directions for making a bed for your dog.
• Fabric Sit-Upons
• Instructions to make a small cushion to sit on outside. Great simple sewing project!
• Sponsored Links
• Plastic Craft SuppliersFind & Contact Low-Cost Suppliers See why so many
businesses trust uswww.alibaba.com
• Plastic BagsFind Industrial Services Solutions For Your Business. Get It Done
Now!www.business.com
• PVC & Packaging bagsWe supply various PVC bags & packaging bag from
China!www.pvc-bag-pvc.com
• Film Container Parachute
• Instructions for making a parachute using an empty film container, shared by
MCWARD68.
• Garbage Bag Ghost Craft
• Find out how to make a ghost decoration or prop using a plastic bag and a few other
supplies.
• Garbage Bag Spider
• Instructions for making a LARGE spider using a garbage bag and a few other supplies.
• Ghastly Ghosts
• These home made ghosts, ranging from tiny to large, are great additions to your
haunted
Dimensions of the anthropological analysis
• MaterialThe specific relation with object material orients in several levels an
possibilities for the analyses
• Social
Symbolic, actitudinal, lingüísitic, artistic in differents ambits of the societies and on the Web
• Environmental
• Policy and politic
• Economic
• They are interdependent, are detached only for the study of the phenomenon of the present recycling
MaterialEach material already offers - in itself - possibilities, difficulties and limits on different levels
• Type of… Paper, clothes, plastic, metal, organic, stone, wood, etc.
• State….New, old, leftover, “imperfect”, broken, rest, surplus, remainder, forgotten, high, etc.
• Source ….extracted”, from interchanged… , donated, anticipated, thrown, recovered, stolen, inherited, found etc.
Symbolic dimensions
When we separate, reuse, recycle and reduce,
a range of significant classifications are applied
Pure-impure - fashionable - fashionable past - New-old - complete-incomplete
-the time of the vital cycle - the interchange
… Dirty- clean - profiteer, recovered, recovered
Useful-useless - fixed, repaired, reconstructed - expensive –
renewed, updated,
Expensive - renewed, up dated, Art-crafts, fraud
– sacrated - profane - good and bad ““ecological”- recycled” “nature”etc.
All of these ..and more…
according to the class, the ethnic group, the religion, the gender, the age, the profession and the social historical context.
What hinders or promotes these ways of thought and behaviour?
knowledge and attitudes
The capacity to “leave and enter” and “to transform” the classification system of the current community, and to stay
connected to it.
• S. Strasser – The rubbish= dynamic category
• C. Lévi-Strauss – “ bricoloured” Intelligence and the
metaphor of the fisherman
• M. Douglas, D. Miller. U. Beck - Degrees of impact of the culture of consumption, policies - (changes in both)
Proposal qualitative study in complex itineraries that relate scenes,
people and materials for the obtaining of ethnographic data
prived/public - rural /urban-
earth water air social + rubish..
Bourdieu : social sand, field ………
schools: teachers, students, authorities, personnel of cleanning, parents, monitors. What do they say, what do they do…about recycling?
Note of fieldwork diary July 2010, School in BCN
““Everything is in fact shit” “What wonder” “Ah, yes my son recycles everything, everything” “the greater one
already made 10 wallets of tetrabrick”
- To analyze contradictions –
- To aply the sense of humor -
Domestic space, hospitals, factories, groups, shared families, sharedflats, stores, factories, etc…
2
• Consumption puts individuals and objects into a relationship to each other and also to their waste.
• Necessity of a comparative study of the social perceptions , Archaeological and anthropological qualitative analyses urban, etc.
• To identify projects of social inclusion (second hand clothes, furniture recovery, tins, etc.)
• To identify healthy districts and cities (plastic bags, tins, paper, furniture, etc.)
• To construct the local history of waste in order to see continuities and discontinuities in the prospect of the studies.
• To analyse the reasons and objectives of the presence of the “original art” and “recycling art” within a local and international view.
• Observation and study of the material culture, patrimonial culture, etc. • .
Politic and Policies
• Public vs Domestic policies
• Coherence? Pamphlets and… more pamphlets!
• Green versus shortermers
• Appropriation of speech – deceivers
• The relevance of the social groups
• Necessity of educative transmission Sustainability, a revealing concept
in practice
Economy
• Consumer society - “Consumers and non citizens, not people”
tension between the concept and the reality; created economic crisis
and the immediate benefit
• Excessive growth “Progress, development and evolution”! Alert in
the speech!!!
• Dissociation of the other dimensions and at their expense
• Ideology of the use and waste.
What happens during recycling?
• Union of the physical (body), psychological and the social
representations: TO THINK and also ACT not only speech
• To recreate classification systems, to individualize them vs.
“Individualitis alienatis”
• To leave the dictate of the market
• To create new economies
• To take care of the environment. .this returns!
Homo Reciclaris
Homo sapiens, economicus, festivus,… sapiens!
• It thinks about and it works with the objects, it reclassifies them, returns them to the
cycle of exchange with others in variable forms
• The Homo reciclaris of each individual has always has been there; it emerges in the
middle of the 20th century and it unfolds in the 21st as an expression of the social,
environmental and cultural relation to give continuity to the human life.
• “If you only consume, you alienate yourself. If you recycle you think.
We are Homos Reciclaris.” CM
Authors
Anthropilogists
C.Lévi -Strauss : Structural and Symbolic Anthropology, and of Art
M. Mauss : Theories of the interchange
P. Bourdieu : Concept of Social Sand, concep of “style”
N .García Canclini : Globalization
M. Douglas and physical anthropology and theories of the complexity : Religion, Simbolic Anthropology, Theories of risk
M. Goicoechea : Physical anthropology and theories of the complexity
Social scientists
R. Sennet - sociologist : crafts
S. Strasser - historian : trash
D. Miller - anthropolgist : objects and consumption
J. Boticello - antrhopologist : textil recycling
L. Norris - anthropologist : textil recycling
C. Montero - anthropologist : food and plastic recycling
H. Tizio - psychoanalyst : theories of affective relationship
A. Leonard - economist : news economies and recycling
E. Morin - philosopher : theories of ecology and complexity
Pending tasks for Social Sciences
• To study the borders of the discipline with the subject
• To develop states of the question
• To interact with other disciplines
• To perform scientific research and case studies, to create
research groups, publications, observatories, etc. in order to
create methodologies and an Anthropology of Recycling
Cecilia Montero Mórtola
Phd in Anthropology
and
Teacher of Spanish(Member of ICAF Int. Com. of Anthropology of Food – Tecaher of Anthropology in UNED –
Bess School- Gresc@-UAB)
Antrhopology of Recycling
**Independient Research*
Gratefulness
To Feria Oekorausch, Colonia and A Drap Art. Barcelona
Translation to : Benjamin Schuster
Mail [email protected]