V annual Cycle Young Social Scientists
2009-2010

January 20th, 2010, 17:00, CES Seminar Room
 
Alexandre Pólvora (University of Paris I)

Waste thinking: towards a critical social analysis between daily the material worlds and conceptual worlds.

 
Abstract: A time when ecological discourses and good environmental practices permeate and fill up many of our technological, economical, political, judicial, and specially  media agendas, is a time when elements such as waste cannot fail to also make part of our agenda. All-over we are convinced that formatted actions such as reduce, reuse or recycle are correct answers to an ever growing problem. Everyone seems to debate or even criticize many of the damages that a society, organized for and by accelerated consumption, causes in terms of present and future sustainabilities, between the instants of substitution of material governed by the urgency of the novelty and consequent renovations of what is urgent. In addition, a complex organization of large and small technical structures conjoins ever more with the social affirmation of its management and waste elimination activities, while direct solutions of the material and conceptual kind for what is ultimately discarded or left over at the end.
Nonetheless, what we consider waste, and believe not to be or must not be part of our everyday worlds, must and may still be significant parts of those worlds. Many wastes still exist, or are able to produce existences in the midst of several contexts, a bit more than those framed by the massification of the great systems, and by the practical or symbolic deletions and removals which their technical operations do not cease to establish as dominant paradigm. It is in this sense that this paper shall seek to explore arguments in which, rather than merely sentence the options of the present modernity while generating or managing its waste, allows a critique of divisions excessively marked in our material and conceptual realities. It is mainly in this sense that alternative routes regarding the numerous marginalizations of which waste are subject in the development and comprehension of our daily worlds will emerge.

Biographic note: Holds a degree in Sociology at ISCTE with D.E.A and a Master in Philosophy at University of Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne. Presently is a doctoral degree student in Sociology at ISCTE and in Philosophy at University of Paris 1/Panthéon-Sorbonne, with a Doctoral Degree Grant from the Foundation for Science and Technology. Is researcher at the Centre d’Etude des Techniques, des Connaissances et des Pratiques of the University of Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne. Was visiting researcher at the department for studies on science and technology at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.