This book emblematic of a wild and adventurous strain of writing that attempted to marry theory, politics, pleasure and experimentation. It redefines the conceptualization of garbage and waste, radically.
The book is an inquiry on the subject that is intellectually exhilarating and crafted into provocative polemic. Debunking the humanist mythology about the grandeur of civilization, World of Garbage and Waste… suggests instead that the management of garbage and waste is crucial to our identities as modern individuals – including the organisation of the city. Far from rising above the much, the book argues, we are thoroughly mired in it, particularly when we appear most clean and hygienic. At times, it appears that the volume breaks the rules and challenges the conventions of ‘proper’ academic discourse.
With the rise of the mass market becoming classics in the literature of consumer culture, ‘World of Garbage and Waste…’ attempts to examine an essential but neglectd part of that culture – the trash it produces and finds in it an unexpected wealth of meaning.
Beofre the twentieth century, garbage and waste was nearly non-existent. Everything possible was reused. Over the last hundred years and more, modern societies have hooked on disposability, fashion, and constant technological changes, and the rise of mass consumption has led to waste on an unprecedented unimaginable scale.
‘World of Garbage and Waste…’ recaptures a hidden part of our social history, vividly illustrating that what we throw away defines us as much as what we keep. The volume has an illuminating perspective on the modern human society’s encounter with the world of goods and a major contribution to the cultural history of modern society.
Contents :
1. The Introduction : Swatchh Bharat Mission
2. The Origin of Garbage and Waste
3. The Invasion of Garbage
4. Rubbish and Prudent Consumption
5. Waste and Growth of Bacteriology
6. E-waste and Global Politics
7. Dirt, Lifestyle and Modemization
8. Need for Waste Concerns
9. Waste : Perceptions of Dirt and Filth
10. The Ragpickers and Garbage World
11. Waste : Genetic Alteration of Mumbai
12. Waste and the City Professionals
13. Psychogeography of Garbage
14. The Epilogue
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