Hazardous Travels. Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy

“鬼地”、国家管辖范围以外的废物处理场和危险废物的流动性构成了当今全球废物经济的两个关键要素，并有助于维持建立在经济扩张、利润最大化和环境可持续性基础上的经济体系，这些都是20世纪70年代后西方工业资本主义的特征。从理论上讲，如果一种材料被丢弃，并且能够对人类或环境造成重大伤害，就可以被视为危险废物。在实践中，对于哪些材料和阈值使废物具有危险，并没有具有全球约束力的定义。这种定义和管理上的缺陷使得有害物质在概念上和空间上都具有高度的流动性。不同的行为者、国家政府、国际机构、企业、非政府组织、环境活动人士，对危险废物赋予不同的政治或经济价值。基于这些，他们进口或出口有害物质，从而在全球范围内制造有毒的幽灵土地。有毒废物鬼城是全球废物经济的另一个基本条件。在1970年代环境转变之后，特别是工业国家开始将其有毒工业和废物转移到处理或回收，主要是到全球南方。从概念上讲，幽灵土地起源于19世纪的英国工业化，以大英帝国内外遥远的幽灵土地资源为基础（Pomeranz, 2000）。这些国家仍然存在，但已经转移到全球商品链的末端。他们是工业资本主义外部化社会的缩影，在那里，人们不一定要入不敷出，而是要超越别人（Lessenich, 2015）。研究小组“危险之旅：幽灵之地和全球废物经济”试图通过政治、文化和社会经济结构探索从20世纪60年代至今全球废物经济的动态，这些结构允许参与者对危险废物给予不同的价值，从而使有毒物质得以重新安置。该项目包括一项关于长期形成全球废物经济的结构和动态的总体研究（OS），以及三个关于危险废物转移类型的单独案例研究：(A)两个德国之间的废物处理，(B)印度的废物回收，以及(C)厄瓜多尔的污染工业出口。该项目的目标是：(1)确定政治、文化和社会经济行为者和结构，这些行为者和结构形成了危险废物管理的话语和实践；(2)分析危险废物的竞争建设之间的翻译过程，从垃圾帝国主义到自愿交换；(3)在全球视角下对比和比较这些发现。该研究小组以危险废物为视角，结合全球化理论、后殖民主义、经济知识思维和物质转向的见解，寻求扩大对生态与经济之间无数关系的理解。

Ghost acres, waste disposal sites beyond national jurisdiction, and mobility of hazardous waste provide the two key elements of todays global waste economy, and help sustain an economic system built on economic expansion, profit maximization, and environmental sustainability characteristic of post-1970s Western industrial capitalism.In theory, a material can be considered hazardous waste if discarded and able to cause substantial harm to humans or the environment. In practice there is no globally binding definition of what materials and thresholds make waste hazardous. This definitional and regulatory deficiency makes hazardous material highly mobile, both conceptually and spatially. Various actors, national governments, international institutions, businesses, NGOs, environmental activists, ascribe different political or economic values to hazardous waste. Based on these, they import or export hazardous material and so create toxic ghost acres globally. Toxic waste ghost acres are the other fundamental condition of the global waste economy. Following the environmental turn of the 1970s, industrial countries in particular started relocating their toxic industries and waste for disposal or recycling, primarily to the Global South. Conceptually, ghost acres originated within nineteenth-century British industrialization, predicated on resources from distant ghost acres of land in and beyond the British Empire (Pomeranz, 2000). These still exist, but have moved to the end of the global commodity chain. They epitomize the externalizing society of industrial capitalism, where people do not necessarily live beyond their means but beyond someone elses (Lessenich, 2015). The research group Hazardous Travels: Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy seeks to explore the dynamics of the global waste economy from the 1960s to present through the political, cultural, and socioeconomic structures that allowed its participants to give different value to hazardous waste and so enabled toxic material relocation. The project contains one overarching study (OS) on the structures and dynamics shaping the global waste economy over time, and three individual case studies of hazardous waste relocation types: (A) waste disposal between the two Germanies, (B) waste recycling in India, and (C) export of dirty industries in Ecuador. The projects goal is to (1) identify the political, cultural, and socioeconomic actors and structures that forged discourses on and practices of hazardous waste management, (2) analyze the translation processes between contesting constructions of hazardous waste, from garbage imperialism to voluntary exchange, and (3) contrast and compare these findings in global perspective. Using hazardous waste as a lens, this research group seeks to expand understanding of the myriad relationships of ecology and economy, incorporating insights of globalization theory, postcolonialism, economic intellectual thinking, and the material turn.