Doctoral Dissertation Research: Recycling and waste management in Chinese cities

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Yale University doctoral candidate Amy Zhang, under the guidance of Dr. Michael R. Dove, will undertake research on the transformation of social and physical contemporary urban landscapes through the lens of waste management. Waste management has become a focus of official efforts to construct modern cities, a prominent means of livelihood for rural migrants, and a frequent rallying point for urban environmental activists. Building on the emerging literature in anthropology on the material dimensions of social life and urban infrastructure, this study aims to examine the meanings and values that inform different ways of discarding and reclaiming objectsThrough eighteen months of ethnographic research with waste experts, activists and informal collectors in Guangzhou and Beijing, China, the researcher will identify the social practices, technologies and infrastructures of waste management, and the accompanying aspirations and values that are reconfiguring China's urban environment. She also seeks to understand the public reception of science and technology in China; various ways of knowing waste, risk, and pollution; and the relationship between state efforts to build modern cities and the lived experiences of inhabitants. The researcher will use a variety of social science research methods including semi-structured interviews, oral histories, participant observation (of waste management schemes), ethnographic life-cycle analysis (of waste objects), photographic documentation, and photovoice. Public policy debates on waste management in China foreground the need for technological solutions. This project broadens the debate over municipal waste management to include recognition of the public reception of science and technology and informal systems of recycling. These dimensions are important to both policy makers and urban and regional planners who seek to design livable cities in China and the global south. Finally, this project adds an ethnographic perspective, focused on the significance of human aspirations and the unforeseen outcomes of social practice, to a growing interdisciplinary field aimed at enhancing understandings of the human dimensions of urban environmental change. Supporting this research also supports the education of a graduate student.