Discards are commonly understood as the mundane, worthless and redundant afterwards human activity. In recent years, however, there has been an increasing scholarly interest in how societies relate their discards. Building on this research, this seminar takes as a starting point the fact that humans spend much of our lives dealing with waste, and that the problem of how we deal with waste is at the heart of the environmental crisis and the development of more sustainable futures. We will explore what is rejected and examine waste as a dynamic category that needs to be understood in relation to the modern contexts in which it most often occurs and the power relations in which it is embedded. We will also address practices of living with waste, through which discards become enmeshed in new social relations and material practices. Discard studies can thus convey crucial insights into contemporary culture.
- Kursleiter:in: Prof. Dr. Anja Schwarz