Abstract
The interdisciplinary Electronic Life Histories Project integrates behavioral archaeology, engineering, anthropology, art, material culture, and science and technology studies to employ a life history model, community-based research and creative engagement to address the making of electronic waste. Focused in the Greater Lafayette area of Indiana, which is home to a major university, this project examines the entanglements among people, electronics and waste-making. Specifically, this paper focuses on a significant interstitial stage between reuse and discard. We consider the stories and meanings affixed to electronic objects once they have entered people’s homes, and the complex lives they have before they are discarded, reused, or repurposed. We find ‘closet fill’ or junk drawers of electronic devices, bits, bytes and peripherals are often unintentional collections that are situationally valued through a constellation of factors that include emotional attachments, technological obsolescence, imagined use-value, as well as discrepancies between perceived value and market value. While the problem of closet fill has been discussed by scholars, how electronics enter this interstitial stage, why they remain and what motivates movement out of this part of the life history of objects have not been closely examined. We suggest a life history approach can make these interstitial phases visible in a way that illuminates the key factors in keeping electronics versus discarding. As opposed to descriptions of waste as disorderly, abject, or disgusting, our work shows that objects at the interstices of wasting practices embody, represent, and express many meanings to participants socially, spatially, and structurally.
Highlights
I had always been a music lover, but this iPod allowed me to steal away, to my own musical world full of emotion and soul, and it was awesome
We argue that boxes in attics, basements and garages or junk drawers in kitchens, living rooms and offices that contain electronic devices, bits, bytes and peripherals are often unintentional collections that represent material sites of hope, intention, m emory and concern—matter in place, but out of use
We considered the junk drawer space as a critical site that reflects much about individual and household collection practices and relationships to electronic objects
Summary
I had always been a music lover, but this iPod allowed me to steal away, to my own musical world full of emotion and soul, and it was awesome. Household Junk Drawers —Between Waste and Collection The Junk Drawer Project brings together objects, images and narratives, exploring forms of value and categorical distinctions in the context of electronic life histories and e-waste formation It emerged early on as a key part of meeting our methodological, theoretical, pedagogical, and public engagement goals. Using the information that students generate through answering questions, they communicate their object stories and findings through art, narrative and text: including but not limited to audio, sound, film, photography, posters, or other methods of reporting out findings and experiences Another important goal of the larger project is to explore aesthetic and engagement possibilities for public presentation of the outcomes as a way to further critical conversation about e-waste.
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