The WasteMatters project will coordinate together with the DECAY project the session Sociology of Waste at Sosiologipäivät, the annual national sociology conference in Finland, to be organised in Tampere, 23-24 March 2022.
The session will take place on Fri 24 March. The call for papers for the session is now open, and we warmly welcome submissions on theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues, and the papers may be based on ongoing or finished research, masters’ or doctoral thesis or other kinds of work.
The final deadline for the abstracts is Tuesday, 31 January 2023.
More information about submission guidelines can be found both here.
Here is the description of the session:
SOCIOLOGY OF WASTE
Coordinators:
Olli Pyyhtinen, Tampereen yliopisto, olli.pyyhtinen(at)tuni.fi
Niina Uuusitalo, Tampereen yliopisto, niina.uusitalo(at)tuni.fi
Stylianos Zavos, Tampereen yliopisto, stylianos.zavos(at)tuni.fi
Humans are entangled with waste in complex patterns of economic, ecological, political, and corporeal interdependency. Yet this entanglement, paradoxically, tends to remain largely hidden and invisible: the accumulation of waste is something everyone is aware of, but we would rather want to close our eyes to waste and remove it out of sight. However, waste cannot be eliminated entirely, but only moved elsewhere and transformed into something else. The workshop addresses the unavoidable excess produced by society and our actions. We invite theoretical, empirical, and methodological presentations of various stripes to join us in exploring waste as a part of society and everyday life. Possible topics include but are not limited to: the processes through which things become waste; the mundane governance of waste; recycling practices of households and businesses; the circular economy transition; ethics of waste; and the materiality of waste.