Week 6: Waste and toxicity in

the Anthropocene

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 Ethnographic reflection

- 1,500 words (+/1 10%)

- Due Monday W9 (after the break)
- Worth 20% of final mark
- Please submit your essay via Canvas

Marking rubrics for this assessment and sample HD essays are

available on Canvas (under the left-hand tab “Assessments”)

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 Ethnographic reflection

a. Pick a location and/or activity that you frequent or practice regularly in

everyday life, and that involves an encounter with a non-human being,
ecosystem, object, or element
b. Spend one or more extended periods of time in this location/practicing
this activity
c. Describe in detail the location and/or activity, including your own
personal experiences and reflections
d. Analyze the location and/or activity by using one or more concepts
covered in the unit
e. Incorporate additional multi-modal materials (e.g., photographs, film, or
audio) to supplement the written part of the reflection
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 Ethnographic reflection

- Be creative, experimental, and personal

- Write the essay in the first person
- Multiple encounters makes for better essays
- Do not undertake an encounter that falls outside of your
ordinary experiences, or that has happened in the past
- Balance the 2 parts of the essay: description and analysis
- At least 2 references from the unit should be used
- Check out “Further Guidance” on Canvas (under “Assessments”)

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 Ethnographic reflection

Weeks 6 – 8 will offer ideas for projects, but think back also on what we’ve
already covered as possible inspirations e.g.

- Urban multispecies entanglements (Houston et al. reading)

- Climate change - art and activism (Steiner et al. reading)
- Animals as commodities and sources of work/labor (Barua reading)
- Biodiversity conservation and care/violence (Srinivasan)
- The meanings of native and invasive species (Trigger reading)
- Indigenous perspectives on the Anthropocene (Todd and
Davis/Yunkaporta readings)

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 Any questions?

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 Overview of W5

- Biodiversity conservation and feral proliferation

- What counts as “biodiversity” and “feral/pest” is often socially

constructed rather than biologically determined

- Different sets of values, interests, and priorities shape which individuals,

species, populations, and/or ecosystems are encouraged to live or made
to die

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Week 6: Waste and toxicity in
the Anthropocene

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 What examples of waste exist in the Anthropocene?

What about toxicity?

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 Waste and toxicity in the Anthropocene
- There is no single place on earth that isn’t affected in one way or another
by waste or toxicity (including the Mariana Trench)
- Waste and toxicity tend to be by-products of anthropogenic, industrial
activity
- As with so much we have covered so far, they tend to be unevenly
distributed across human and non-human bodies (Murphy 2017)
- Their effects are often latent and intergenerational, spreading deep into
the future (Neimanis 2008) – a form of “slow violence” (Nixon 2011)
- Waste and toxicity are, in many ways, here to say – how do we then learn
to live with, but also challenge, these realities? (Shotwell 2016)

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 This week’s readings
Doron, A. and R. Jeffrey. 2018. Waste of a
Nation: Garbage and Growth in India
[Introduction and Conclusion].

Davis, H. 2015. “Toxic Progeny: The

Plastisphere and Other Queer Futures.”
PhiloSOPHIA.

Presenter, the floor is yours!

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 Some key takeaways
- The removal and reuse of waste often lays
waste to human lives
- Where waste ends up is a product of
uneven capitalist world-systems
- Toxicity and waste invite us to queer the
future and what it might look like for us
and other-than-human beings
- Technology and science can offer “fixes” to
these problems – but often they are
among the causes/drivers of these
problems in the first place

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 Supplementary readings
– Liboiron, M., M. Tironi and N. Calvillo. 2018.
“Toxic Politics: Acting in a Permanently Polluted
World.” Social Studies of Science 48 (3): 331–
49.

– Murphy, M. 2017. “Alterlife and Decolonial

Chemical Relations.” Cultural Anthropology 32
(4): 494–503.

– Resnick, A. 2021. “The Limits of Resilience:

Managing Waste in the Racialized
Anthropocene.” American Anthropologist 132(2):
222 – 236.

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 Next week
More-than-human approaches

In Week 7, we’ll explore more-than-human approaches to

the Anthropocene. We’ll ask:

– What are the objectives of multispecies studies and the

environmental humanities, and why do they matter in
decentering the “human”?
– What kinds of opportunities and challenges does a
multispecies methodology pose in terms of accessing
and representing the worlds of non-human beings whom
we share the planet with?
– What are more-than-human stories of the Anthropocene
for, who are they written with, and what purpose do
they serve in the worlds they describe and analyze?
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 Week 6 “to do” list
❑ Contribute to W6 Discussion Board
❑ Do required readings for W7
❑ Jot a few terms in the Google doc
❑ For one/two of you, prepare your
10-minute in-class presentation
❑ Check out the description and rubric
for your second written assessment
(Ethnographic Reflection)

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