Towards a care perspective on waste: A new direction in discard studies

Abstract

This article examines the development and theoretical orientation of the scholarship on waste in discard studies. It shows how three major streams of research in the literature conceptualise waste: as a resource and property, a risk and a source of prosperity. Each of these theoretical framings of waste points to a specific type of politics and temporality. However, all three tend to be inadequate in balancing the discussion of ‘waste’ with a discussion of the ‘stewardship’ of discarded objects, emphasising instead the potential value generation or transformation of waste. Consequently, research on waste tends to exclude ways to live with the waste materials that cannot always be transformed away easily. Drawing inspiration from feminist science and technology studies, this article argues that the analytical lens of care, which highlights the ‘affective engagement in space’, ‘the ethics of care’ and ‘interdependency’, may further the existing studies of waste by inspiring us to imagine a politics of inclusion and the temporality of slowness.