How can we understand “placing” in relation to the excesses, toxicities, and undersirables produced by contemporary capitalism? This panel explores the forms of work, human and non-human life, relationships and affects implicated in producing and distributing waste. What are the inequities embedded in waste management systems in Songdo, and Washington DC? What kinds of futures are imagined through technologies of waste sorting in Shanghai? How is life made livable in the climate precarious worlds of Kashmiri farms and Sundarbans? What politics of recognition are implicated in addressing the toxic by-products of a wind farm in West Texas? Ultimately this panel reflects on the ways in which destruction and it’s distribution across bodies, spaces, and time (re)produces place. 

Keywords: waste; toxicity; ruination; infrastructures; climate; environment; labor

Talks & Panelists:

• Farming a Ruin: Living with Bad Weather in South Kashmir, Arif Hayat Nairang (he/him), University of Minnesota,

• East of the River: Race, Place, and the Environmental Politics of Washington, D.C., 1957-1980, Justin Shapiro (he/him), University of Maryland-College Park

• Environmental Relations: Women of Sundarbans, Amrita DasGupta (she/her), School of Oriental and African Studies

• The Politics of Environmental Civility in China’s Urban Waste Sorting, Goeun Lee (she/her), University of Kentucky,

Discussant: Dr. Waqas Butt, University of Toronto at Scarborough
Moderated by Fatima Tassadiq