{"id":10838,"date":"2023-11-15T17:15:51","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T16:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/geoblog\/2023\/11\/les-disposabilites-urbaines-les-dechets-et-les-politiques-relationnelles-de-place-making-a-cartagena-en-colombie\/"},"modified":"2023-12-04T08:57:25","modified_gmt":"2023-12-04T07:57:25","slug":"urban-disposabilities-garbage-and-the-relational-politics-of-place-making-in-cartagena-colombia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/geoblog\/en\/2023\/11\/urban-disposabilities-garbage-and-the-relational-politics-of-place-making-in-cartagena-colombia\/","title":{"rendered":"Urban disposabilities : garbage and the relational politics of place-making in Cartagena, Colombia"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-post-featured-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/geoblog\/files\/2023\/11\/neville.jpg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" style=\"object-fit:cover;\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/geoblog\/files\/2023\/11\/neville.jpg 640w, https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/geoblog\/files\/2023\/11\/neville-300x169.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-background\" style=\"background-color:#f2f2f2\"><em>Thesis defended by Laura Neville, December 7, 2023 &#8211; Institute of geography and durability (IGD).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From littered plastic bottles clogging canals, to heaps of construction waste forming land over water, failed dumpsite closures, or waste pickers displaced from recycling routes,\u00a0<em>urban disposabilities<\/em>\u00a0are manifestations of the multifaceted socio-material relations surrounding waste.\u00a0The thesis examines these socio-material relations, as they unfold across urban scales, spaces and temporalities,\u00a0and how they come to matter for shaping relational politics of place-making in the city.\u00a0Treating waste and wasting processes as socially, culturally, economically, and politically situated, the thesis argues that\u00a0<em>urban disposabilities<\/em>\u00a0are shaped by historical continuities of structures of power, urban inequalities and are porous to complex forms of violence.\u00a0By focusing on\u00a0Cartagena\u2019s\u00a0inhabitants\u2019\u00a0quotidian\u00a0and\u00a0mundane\u00a0practices\u00a0with garbage,\u00a0it centres on the bodily process in and through which\u00a0<em>urban disposabilites<\/em>\u00a0are produced along dimensions of social class, race, and gender. Through bodily processes, relational politics of place-making are continuously enacted, contested and reshaped\u00a0in and through waste.\u00a0Waste is thus understood as constitutive of urban belonging and of relational politics of place-making.\u00a0\u00a0The openness of\u00a0<em>urban disposabilities<\/em>\u00a0suggests that garbage-based practices can underpin the social production of place-making, and foreshadow urban futures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Drawing on ethnographic research in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, the thesis traces the circulation, (im-)mobility and containment of household waste in low-, lower middle-, and high-income neighbourhoods, to explore<em>\u00a0<\/em>residents\u2019 coping mechanisms in the absence of waste infrastructures in a self-built settlement; inhabitants\u2019 social imaginaries of waste management in a lower middle-income neighbourhood; residents\u2019 aspirations of household recycling in elite spaces; and waste pickers\u2019 everyday arrangements over waste materials across the city. The diverse practices examined, despite not being overtly conflictual, are all means of making subtle claims and producing place\u00a0<em>with<\/em>\u00a0waste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The juxtaposition of the inhabitants\u2019\u00a0garbage-based everyday practices\u00a0reveals the reconfiguration of gendered, race and class relations and subjectivities, and the contradictions inherent to relational politics\u00a0place-making. Firstly,\u00a0it shows the\u00a0class-based\u00a0discourses, meanings, symbolism, socio-material and political relations surrounding\u00a0waste practices &#8211;\u00a0through which urban inequalities are reproduced in the city. Secondly,\u00a0it\u00a0sheds light on the\u00a0body, as an intimate site of political possibilities and, of the reproduction of urban inequalities.\u00a0It highlights the processes reproducing the racialisation of Afro-Colombian bodies and subjectivities through gendered infrastructural household waste labour. It argues that embodied relational politics of place-making unfold with more-than-human materialites, and\u00a0racialisation represents shared experiences of\u00a0continued proximity with waste materials and toxins. Thirdly, it shows everyday encounters with the state, unfolding through waste practices &#8211; revealing the state\u2019s ambivalent presence &#8211; and drawing intimate relations between the inhabitants and wider structures of power, which, in subtle ways, shape\u00a0urban belonging and the possibility to make claims on the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The thesis presents a contribution at the intersections of feminist urban political ecology, Black Geographies, postcolonial urban studies and decolonial Latin American debates, proposing novel ways of reading the inherent plurality of relational politics of place-making as inhabitants in urban contexts\u00a0contend with ever-evolving waste challenges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thesis defended by Laura Neville, December 7, 2023 &#8211; Institute of geography and durability (IGD). From littered plastic bottles clogging canals, to heaps of construction waste forming land over water, failed dumpsite closures, or waste pickers displaced from recycling routes,\u00a0urban disposabilities\u00a0are manifestations of the multifaceted socio-material relations surrounding waste.\u00a0The thesis examines these socio-material relations, as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":10719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[67055],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10838","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-thesis-defended"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/geoblog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/geoblog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/geoblog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/geoblog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/geoblog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10838"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/geoblog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10844,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/geoblog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10838\/revisions\/10844"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/geoblog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/geoblog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/geoblog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/geoblog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}