Recycling Economies in Latin America: Between Ethics, Environmentalism, and Economics

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My career to date has involved close to a decade of research on the materialities, affective relationships, and lived experiences of Latin American recycling economies and its workers. My initial interest stemmed from a fascination with informal sector recyclers, the kind of lives that can be fashioned from waste and its profits, and the productive rethinking of waste that might emerge from paying attention to those who work closest to rubbish on a daily basis. The ESRC post-doctoral fellowship would represent an invaluable opportunity to disseminate the findings of my past and current research to an international academic audience, policy-makers in relevant countries, and British schoolchildren through interactive workshops. With the pace of environmental change accelerating, the publicizing of my research would be most timely for academic debates, the policy environment, and the education of future generations. The scholarship would also be used to strengthen a proposal for future research on a binational and ethical recycling project supported by the governments of Uruguay and Brazil. The most important piece of work that I propose to undertake during my post-doctoral fellowship consists of the transformation of my ESRC-funded doctoral thesis into a book manuscript to be published with an American university publisher. The central theory set out in this book will be that waste in developing countries, and in Uruguay in particular, can be considered a modern-day 'commons', at risk of appropriation and enclosure and structurally equivalent to the the rural commons enclosed in Britain during the 18th and 19th centuries. Through detailed and nuanced ethnographic engagement with clasificadores (Uruguayan waste-pickers) in and around the country's largest landfill, the book will bring to life what it means to 'common' resources in circumstances normally associated with risk and desperate poverty. The book will also make an important contribution to the growing literature on infrastructures of waste disposal, particularly the ethical clash between formal and informal waste labour, and state and shadow infrastructures.Until now, I have been unable to return to Uruguay to present my research findings. The ESRC fellowship would allow me to present my thesis to academic specialists, waste policymakers, and research participants in Montevideo and neighbouring Buenos Aires. With the formalisation of recycling continuing apace in the region, the presentation of my thesis would constitute an urgent intervention that reconsiders the role of informal waste-work, highlighting both its role as an invaluable support to poor families, and its surprisingly joyful, ludic, and pleasurable dimensions. A modest contribution from the fellowship will fund the translation of key doctoral thesis findings into Spanish, an important ethical and practical consideration when working in a foreign-language environment. Simultaneously, I will work on a series of journal articles which draw on both my doctoral research, and my current research on the Latin American 'cardboard publishing' phenomenon. This refers to the boom in small, independent, publishers that make book covers from recycled cardboard, and to a movement that sits at the intersection of environmentalism, politics, and aesthetics. My work as a temporary research assistant on this interdisciplinary project involves conducting ethnography with publishers in Guadalajara and Cuernavaca (Mexico), and the coordination of a series of impact activities. I will draw on this research for one article to be co-written with Dr Lucy Bell during my ESRC fellowship, preliminarily entitled 'Bodies, Books, and Barrios'. I also plan to impart cardboard bookmaking workshops, previously carried out in Mexico and at the Hay Festival, at schools in Manchester during my fellowship. These are designed to promoting literacy, artistic expression, and environmental consciousness.