Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant: Scrap: The Social Life of Recyclable Metals in the United States and India

加州大学欧文分校的博士生马修·莱恩将在威廉·M·毛雷尔博士的指导下，研究商品如何通过其全球流通改变价值，以及促进这一过程所需的人与人之间相互联系的机制。莱恩将特别关注废金属，它从美国垃圾箱中的垃圾变成了一种可交易的商品，经过半个地球的运输。废金属并不总是被普通民众视为一种商品，在路边回收时往往被忽视，但它仍然是一种正式的流通对象，与数百万人的经济生计息息相关。这位研究人员将追踪从芝加哥的小巷到货船的废金属，这些货船将废金属运往印度，并运往印度的一家炼钢厂，在那里，废金属有助于推动印度的工业扩张。他将使用包括参与者观察、访谈和档案研究在内的多种社会科学方法。将与广泛的参与者进行面谈，其中包括美国的非正式废物收集者(“刮斗者”)、一家废物管理公司、废金属运输者和运输者、印度的非正式分拣者(“拾荒者”)和金属经销商以及印度一家钢铁公司的官员。这项研究很重要，因为它将提供有关当代跨国经济进程和使这些进程成为可能的人口的社会科学数据。研究结果也将对未来的环境和废物管理政策有所帮助。为这个项目提供资金支持一名社会科学家的教育。

University of California-Irvine doctoral student Matthew Lane, with guidance from Dr. William M. Maurer, will undertake research on how commodities change in value through their global circulation and the mechanisms that facilitate the interconnections among people that are necessary for this process to take place. Lane will focus particularly on scrap metal, which moves from being trash in United States dumpsters to being a tradeable commodity after transport halfway around the world. Scrap metal, not always viewed by the general population as a commodity and often neglected in curbside recycling, nonetheless operates as a formal object of circulation that is tied to the economic livelihood of millions of people. The researcher will track scrap metal from the alleyways of Chicago to the freight ships that transport it to India and to a steel refinery in India where it helps to fuel India's industrial expansion. He will use a mix of social science methods including participant observation, interviewing, and archival research. Interviews will be conducted with a broad range of participants, including informal waste collectors in the United States ("scrappers"), a waste management company, scrap metal haulers and transporters, informal sorters ("ragpickers") and metal dealers in India, and officials at an Indian steel company.The research is important because it will provide social science data on contemporary transnational economic processes and the populations that make those processes possible. Findings will also be useful to future environmental and waste management policy. Funding this project supports the education of a social scientist.