Doctoral Dissertation Research: Recycling and waste management in Chinese cities

耶鲁大学博士生艾米·张将在迈克尔·R·道夫博士的指导下，通过废物管理的镜头，承担当代城市景观的社会和物理转变的研究。垃圾管理已成为官方建设现代化城市的重点，是农村流动人口的重要谋生手段，也是城市环保活动人士经常举行的集会。基于人类学中关于社会生活和城市基础设施物质维度的新兴文献，本研究旨在探讨影响丢弃和回收物品的不同方式的意义和价值。通过与广州和北京的废物专家、活动家和非正式收集者中国进行为期18个月的民族志研究，研究人员将确定废物管理的社会实践、技术和基础设施，以及伴随而来的重新塑造中国城市环境的愿望和价值观。她还试图了解《中国》中公众对科学技术的接受；了解浪费、风险和污染的各种方式；以及国家建设现代城市的努力与居民生活体验之间的关系。研究人员将使用各种社会科学研究方法，包括半结构化访谈、口述历史、参与者观察(废物管理方案)、民族志生命周期分析(废物)、摄影文献和PhotoVoice。中国关于废物管理的公共政策辩论突出了对技术解决方案的需求。该项目扩大了关于城市废物管理的辩论，包括承认公众接受科学技术和非正式的回收制度。对于寻求在中国和全球南方设计宜居城市的政策制定者和城市和区域规划者来说，这些维度都很重要。最后，该项目为一个不断发展的跨学科领域增加了一个人种学的视角，侧重于人类愿望的重要性和社会实践的不可预见的结果，旨在加强对城市环境变化的人文方面的理解。支持这项研究也支持研究生的教育。

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.