Dissertation Research: The Social Life of Garbage: Beliefs and Practices of Recycling in Germany

各个时代、各个地方的人们都把旧材料重新利用起来，但在当代德国，回收利用涉及到将废物重新转化为二次原材料的复杂过程。在节约自然资源的信念下，超过90%的德国人每天都会回收利用，这使得一半以上的生活垃圾得到了再利用。这项人类学研究将回收视为一种复杂的社会实践，它植根于并引发了对环境、经济和社会未来的广泛信念。通过在柏林的民族志田野调查，研究人员将追求这样一种假设，即当代德国人表达了他们对社会环境的体验，特别是他们对当前经济危机的体验，就迫在眉睫的自然环境危机而言。本项目以家庭回收的信念和实践为重点，研究日常回收的实践如何与环境资源稀缺的信念和经济资源短缺的个人经历联系起来。研究人员将作为一名参与者观察员，在柏林12个区选定的社区加入垃圾车在路边收集生活垃圾，与垃圾工人的非正式访谈将使她能够对120个家庭进行抽样调查，并与普通人进行60次访谈，这是本研究的核心兴趣。最后，与回收专家的一些访谈和一些档案研究将有助于将民族志数据置于回收的更大的历史政治和经济背景中。SPSS将用于计算环境态度和行为之间的相关性，经济地位的措施，以及对经济和环境的看法。Anthropac将使用共识和对应分析来记录受访者之间的协议和变异性模式。访谈和现场观察笔记将使用AskSam进行分析。对家庭回收的研究将有助于我们理解科技与社会的关系。研究将调查回收技术如何塑造社会，以及社会反过来对回收技术的使用产生了什么影响。它旨在弥合专家对回收的认识与普通人对回收的认识之间存在的差距。这种对科学知识和地方知识之间差异的探索将有助于我们对德国当代环境运动的理论理解。更广泛的影响环保主义在德国的兴起带来了立法改革，现在所有公民都参与到环保运动中来。虽然许多关于回收技术的研究都依赖于对环境活动家和环境科学专家的采访，但该项目通过扩大其范围，将更多的普通公民纳入该领域，从而对该领域做出了贡献。作为一种日常行为，家庭垃圾回收唤起了普通德国人对环境、经济和社会的无数信念，这些信念有时与环保主义者和回收专家的观点不同。通过解决现有回收技术与影响这些技术的人们对回收的实际信念和做法之间的差距，该项目将产生一个知识库，可供政策制定者和废物管理部门使用，以改善人们的环境和经济生活质量。

Project SummaryPeoples of all times and places have used old materials anew, but in contemporary Germany recycling involves complex processes of renewing waste into secondary raw materials. In the belief to be saving natural resources, over 90% of Germans recycle on a daily basis, which allows for more than half of domestic waste to be reused. This anthropological study views recycling as a complex social practice that is rooted in, and gives rise to widespread beliefs about the environment, the economy, and the future of society. Through ethnographic fieldwork in Berlin, the researcher will pursue the hypothesis that contemporary Germans articulate their experience of the social environment, specifically their experience of the present economic crisis, in terms of an imminent crisis of the natural environment. Focusing on beliefs and practices of household recycling, this project investigates how the daily practices of recycling might relate to beliefs in the scarcity of environmental resources and to personal experiences of a shortage of economic resources. The researcher will be a participant observer by joining garbage trucks on curbside collections of household waste in selected neighborhoods in twelve districts of Berlin Informal interviews with garbage workers will allow her to sample 120 households for administering a survey and conducting 60 interviews with ordinary people, who are the central interest of this study. Finally, a few interviews with recycling experts and some archival research will help situate the ethnographic data in the larger historical political and economic context of recycling. SPSS will be used to compute the correlation between environmental attitudes and behaviors, measures of economic status, and perceptions of the economy and the environment. Anthropac will be used to document patterns of agreement and variability among respondents using consensus and correspondence analysis. Interviews and field notes on observations will be analyzed using AskSam.Intellectual Merit This study of household recycling will contribute to our understanding of the relationship between science and technology and society. Research will investigate how recycling technologies have shaped society and what impact society in turn is having on use of recycling technologies. It aims to close the gap in knowledge that exists on the differences between experts' knowledge and ordinary people's knowledge of recycling. This exploration of differences between scientific and local knowledge will contribute to our theoretical understanding of the contemporary environmental movement in Germany.Broader Impacts The rise of environmentalism in Germany has brought legislative changes that now involve all citizens in the environmental movement. While many studies of recycling technologies have relied on interviews with environmental activists and experts in the environmental sciences, this project contributes to the field by broadening its scope to include the larger number of ordinary citizens. As a daily practice, the recycling of household garbage invokes in ordinary Germans myriad beliefs about the environment, economy and society, which sometimes differ from those of environmentalists and recycling experts. By addressing the gap that has developed between existing recycling technologies and people's actual beliefs and practices of recycling that impact these technologies, this project will produce a knowledge base that can be used by policymakers and waste management for improving the quality of people's lives, both environmentally and economically.