Marc Kalina
Biographic Data
| ID | 217174 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marc Kalina |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marc |
| FAMILY NAME | Kalina |
| SIGNATURE | KALINA M |
| AFFILIATIONS | ETH Zurich |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6335-3845 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 40 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Adam cried bitterly
This article explores how urban Malawians construct moral and theological meaning of waste and how these constructions shape environmental practices, in densely populated areas of Blantyre. Challenging the assumption that environmental behaviour can be improved primarily through education, the study argues that moral action is grounded in contextual ‘immanent logics’ shaped by lived experience, social realities and religious belief. Drawing on in…
Rethinking socio-cultural resistance
Toilet-linked anaerobic digesters (TLADs) are promoted as technologies that can simultaneously address household energy, sanitation, and agricultural needs, yet diffusion remains uneven, and project failures are frequently attributed to “socio-cultural resistance.” This paper challenges that narrative by examining why Nepal's domestic biogas programme achieved greater success in implementing TLADs than India's, despite broadly similar policies an…
Not just a donor learning experience
In Africa, investments in domestic biogas projects have yielded mixed results, with numerous poor outcomes reported. While many commonly cited barriers contribute to these failures, the role of structural issues rooted in development and aid remains underexplored and poorly understood. This investigation examined 72 tarpaulin-based biogas digesters funded by UNDP across seven districts in Malawi, which experienced rapid failure shortly after impl…
Absorbent hygiene products disposal behaviour in informal settlements
Our findings confirmed the link between poor mental health and unsanitary AHPs disposal. This is especially relevant because poor mental health is common within South Africa. Addressing mental health problems within these communities is an essential step to providing sustainable waste management services. The findings informed an intervention strategy to implement a future collection system for these communities, and similar low-income or informa…
From failure to fairness
The purpose of this perspective piece is to advocate for a paradigm shift in biogas research, and argues for the need to centre accountability and justice in household biogas development research and discussion Drawing from biogas literature and the authors' own experiences in South Asia and Southern Africa, the perspective illustrates how a lack of accountability in biogas programmes has led to negative outcomes and harm to beneficiaries of top-…
“It is unbearable to breathe here”
Blantyre, Malawi’s Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH), or Queen’s, as it’s known locally, is the country’s largest public hospital. However, Queen’s is not served by regular municipal waste collection. Rather, most hospital waste (infectious and non-infectious) is gathered by grounds staff and openly burned, in several constantly smouldering piles, sending up clouds of smoke. Speaking directly to an identified knowledge gap on air quality im…
The rich will always be able to dispose of their waste”
A significant proportion of South African municipalities, who hold the mandate for providing solid waste management (SWM) services for millions of South Africans, appear to be on the brink of collapse. On the frontlines of municipal failure, the city of Makhanda, following two decades of poor governance and mismanagement, has found itself unable to fulfil its mandate, with the state retreating on SWM service provision, and disruptions to waste ma…
From potential to practice
The purpose of this comment is to call for more critical engagement with the potential and practice for biogas investment on the African continent. Over the past two decades, immense amounts of money have been spent by African governments, private individuals, and most conspicuously, international aid agencies and donors, on countless biogas projects in every country on the continent. Yet, despite the investments, biogas in African countries has …
“We are from there, that’s our land”
Mzedi dumpsite is the only city-run waste facility in the city of Blantyre, Malawi. Although the entire site is city-owned, the periphery of the dumping site has been used for agricultural purposes for generations, but has become a space of contestation between growers, the city, and dump managers, as unregulated dumping has swelled the boundaries of the site, spilling waste into the surrounding fields, accentuating growing pressure for land. Dra…
Conceptualising Reuse in African Households
African households are often models of sustainability, practicing daily behaviours, which, if even not directly associated by the individual with Western conceptualisations of ‘recycling’ or ‘reuse’, have dramatically positive impacts on the amounts of household waste generated. However, rarely has the African household been given the same consideration, and there is a poor understanding within the discipline how poor individuals, and Africans in…
As South Africa’s cities burn
In July 2021, large swathes of South Africa experienced several days of intense violence and looting, nominally stemming from political causes, but rooted more deeply in spiraling inequality and growing poverty. As the violence slowed, the “clean-up”, began immediately, with South Africa’s citizens banding together to sweep away the collected waste and debris left behind. Yet, as South Africa’s most populous provinces burned, the detritus of thei…
A neighbourhood of necessity”
Wasters, agnostics, enforcers, competitors, and community integrators
Within South Africa’s recycling economy, informal waste pickers (also known as reclaimers) generate immense value for local waste management systems by diverting waste from landfills. However, official municipal separation at source ([email protected]) programmes, that task residents with sorting recyclables from their waste for separate collection, have failed to integrate reclaimers’ unofficial collection system. This dislocates reclaimers, for…
My Flight Arrives at 5 am, Can You Pick Me Up
Over the past decade, there has been increased awareness and discourse around the inequalities which structure North-South academic collaboration. The purpose of this discussion is to look at the other side of this dynamic: the gatekeeping burden of African scholars in facilitating Northern fieldwork within the African continent. We argue that this burden further exacerbates inherent inequalities within North-South relationships. By way of conclu…
‘Bad’ Trash
‘Waste’ is everywhere, a common aspect of daily life in both the West and the Global South. However, the ways in which we as individuals understand it as a problem is far from universal. It does not exist independently from the people it affects, rather, waste, as a problem, is continually made and remade through human practice. The purpose of this article is to explore how and why certain ‘waste’ items are and become understood as problems. We a…
Waste management in a more unequal world
Climate change is expected to contribute to global inequality, and exacerbate ecological risk for the world's poor. Despite recent trends within waste management academic discourse, which has begun to engage with inequality, and its underlying socio-economic and socio-political causes, discussions of inequality have so far remained absent from our investigations on climate change's impacts on waste management systems and practices. The purpose of…
We Are Already Sick”
The efficient and sanitary management of infectious waste is an essential part of the humanitarian response to any disaster, including the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, in many contexts within the Global South, waste management systems are poorly equipped to handle these waste streams during periods of normalcy, let alone during times of crisis. The purpose of this article is draw attention to a number of existing inequalities that de…
Narratives of home and neighbourhood within state-subsidised aged housing in Durban, South Africa
You have to say everything is nice here”
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the author’s research experiences in northern Mozambique in order explore the multiplicity of gatekeeper relations that arose while seeking to arrange access to both “the field” and respondents, as well as the impacts that these relationships had on the research process. Although this dynamic has been thoroughly described within methodological literature, there exists a tendency to presume resear…
Governo Papa’ and the ‘uncritical citizen
Citizens of authoritarian, single-party, or post-socialist states rarely demonstrate excessive trust in government. A 2013 study by Mattes and Shenga, however, suggests that Mozambique is different, with a citizenry that appears remarkably deferential and trusting of the state, without displaying the criticism or cynicism which Mozambique’s history would suggest would be common. They argue that Mozambicans instead demonstrate an ‘uncritical citiz…
Subsistence marine fishing in a neoliberal city
In post-apartheid South Africa, the blue economy has been identified as an untapped resource for creating employment and stimulating economic growth. However, in the port city of Durban, subsistence fishing has formed an important component of both the livelihood and identity of individuals living in marginalized communities adjacent to the harbor for over a century. However, since America's 9/11 terrorist attacks a number of new international la…
Becoming an Agricultural Growth Corridor
Agricultural growth corridors (AGCs) have begun proliferating across the actual and policy landscapes of southeastern Africa. Cast as an emerging megaproject strategy, AGCs combine the construction of large-scale logistics (i.e., roads, railways, ports) with attracting investment in commercial agribusiness and smallholder farming. While scholars have long attended to spatial development schemes in the Global South, literature on the rising AGCs o…
My Flight Arrives at 5 am, Can You Pick Me Up
Over the past decade, there has been increased awareness and discourse around the inequalities which structure North-South academic collaboration. The purpose of this discussion is to look at the other side of this dynamic: the gatekeeping burden of African scholars in facilitating Northern fieldwork within the African continent. We argue that this burden further exacerbates inherent inequalities within North-South relationships. By way of conclu…
Becoming an Agricultural Growth Corridor
Agricultural growth corridors (AGCs) have begun proliferating across the actual and policy landscapes of southeastern Africa. Cast as an emerging megaproject strategy, AGCs combine the construction of large-scale logistics (i.e., roads, railways, ports) with attracting investment in commercial agribusiness and smallholder farming. While scholars have long attended to spatial development schemes in the Global South, literature on the rising AGCs o…
Governo Papa’ and the ‘uncritical citizen
Citizens of authoritarian, single-party, or post-socialist states rarely demonstrate excessive trust in government. A 2013 study by Mattes and Shenga, however, suggests that Mozambique is different, with a citizenry that appears remarkably deferential and trusting of the state, without displaying the criticism or cynicism which Mozambique’s history would suggest would be common. They argue that Mozambicans instead demonstrate an ‘uncritical citiz…
You have to say everything is nice here”
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the author’s research experiences in northern Mozambique in order explore the multiplicity of gatekeeper relations that arose while seeking to arrange access to both “the field” and respondents, as well as the impacts that these relationships had on the research process. Although this dynamic has been thoroughly described within methodological literature, there exists a tendency to presume resear…
A neighbourhood of necessity”
From failure to fairness
The purpose of this perspective piece is to advocate for a paradigm shift in biogas research, and argues for the need to centre accountability and justice in household biogas development research and discussion Drawing from biogas literature and the authors' own experiences in South Asia and Southern Africa, the perspective illustrates how a lack of accountability in biogas programmes has led to negative outcomes and harm to beneficiaries of top-…
Wasters, agnostics, enforcers, competitors, and community integrators
Within South Africa’s recycling economy, informal waste pickers (also known as reclaimers) generate immense value for local waste management systems by diverting waste from landfills. However, official municipal separation at source ([email protected]) programmes, that task residents with sorting recyclables from their waste for separate collection, have failed to integrate reclaimers’ unofficial collection system. This dislocates reclaimers, for…
Narratives of home and neighbourhood within state-subsidised aged housing in Durban, South Africa
You have to say everything is nice here”
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the author’s research experiences in northern Mozambique in order explore the multiplicity of gatekeeper relations that arose while seeking to arrange access to both “the field” and respondents, as well as the impacts that these relationships had on the research process. Although this dynamic has been thoroughly described within methodological literature, there exists a tendency to presume resear…
Governo Papa’ and the ‘uncritical citizen
Citizens of authoritarian, single-party, or post-socialist states rarely demonstrate excessive trust in government. A 2013 study by Mattes and Shenga, however, suggests that Mozambique is different, with a citizenry that appears remarkably deferential and trusting of the state, without displaying the criticism or cynicism which Mozambique’s history would suggest would be common. They argue that Mozambicans instead demonstrate an ‘uncritical citiz…
Subsistence marine fishing in a neoliberal city
In post-apartheid South Africa, the blue economy has been identified as an untapped resource for creating employment and stimulating economic growth. However, in the port city of Durban, subsistence fishing has formed an important component of both the livelihood and identity of individuals living in marginalized communities adjacent to the harbor for over a century. However, since America's 9/11 terrorist attacks a number of new international la…
Becoming an Agricultural Growth Corridor
Agricultural growth corridors (AGCs) have begun proliferating across the actual and policy landscapes of southeastern Africa. Cast as an emerging megaproject strategy, AGCs combine the construction of large-scale logistics (i.e., roads, railways, ports) with attracting investment in commercial agribusiness and smallholder farming. While scholars have long attended to spatial development schemes in the Global South, literature on the rising AGCs o…
‘Bad’ Trash
‘Waste’ is everywhere, a common aspect of daily life in both the West and the Global South. However, the ways in which we as individuals understand it as a problem is far from universal. It does not exist independently from the people it affects, rather, waste, as a problem, is continually made and remade through human practice. The purpose of this article is to explore how and why certain ‘waste’ items are and become understood as problems. We a…
Waste management in a more unequal world
Climate change is expected to contribute to global inequality, and exacerbate ecological risk for the world's poor. Despite recent trends within waste management academic discourse, which has begun to engage with inequality, and its underlying socio-economic and socio-political causes, discussions of inequality have so far remained absent from our investigations on climate change's impacts on waste management systems and practices. The purpose of…
We Are Already Sick”
The efficient and sanitary management of infectious waste is an essential part of the humanitarian response to any disaster, including the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, in many contexts within the Global South, waste management systems are poorly equipped to handle these waste streams during periods of normalcy, let alone during times of crisis. The purpose of this article is draw attention to a number of existing inequalities that de…
Narratives of home and neighbourhood within state-subsidised aged housing in Durban, South Africa
As South Africa’s cities burn
In July 2021, large swathes of South Africa experienced several days of intense violence and looting, nominally stemming from political causes, but rooted more deeply in spiraling inequality and growing poverty. As the violence slowed, the “clean-up”, began immediately, with South Africa’s citizens banding together to sweep away the collected waste and debris left behind. Yet, as South Africa’s most populous provinces burned, the detritus of thei…
A neighbourhood of necessity”
Wasters, agnostics, enforcers, competitors, and community integrators
Within South Africa’s recycling economy, informal waste pickers (also known as reclaimers) generate immense value for local waste management systems by diverting waste from landfills. However, official municipal separation at source ([email protected]) programmes, that task residents with sorting recyclables from their waste for separate collection, have failed to integrate reclaimers’ unofficial collection system. This dislocates reclaimers, for…
My Flight Arrives at 5 am, Can You Pick Me Up
Over the past decade, there has been increased awareness and discourse around the inequalities which structure North-South academic collaboration. The purpose of this discussion is to look at the other side of this dynamic: the gatekeeping burden of African scholars in facilitating Northern fieldwork within the African continent. We argue that this burden further exacerbates inherent inequalities within North-South relationships. By way of conclu…
From potential to practice
The purpose of this comment is to call for more critical engagement with the potential and practice for biogas investment on the African continent. Over the past two decades, immense amounts of money have been spent by African governments, private individuals, and most conspicuously, international aid agencies and donors, on countless biogas projects in every country on the continent. Yet, despite the investments, biogas in African countries has …
“We are from there, that’s our land”
Mzedi dumpsite is the only city-run waste facility in the city of Blantyre, Malawi. Although the entire site is city-owned, the periphery of the dumping site has been used for agricultural purposes for generations, but has become a space of contestation between growers, the city, and dump managers, as unregulated dumping has swelled the boundaries of the site, spilling waste into the surrounding fields, accentuating growing pressure for land. Dra…
Conceptualising Reuse in African Households
African households are often models of sustainability, practicing daily behaviours, which, if even not directly associated by the individual with Western conceptualisations of ‘recycling’ or ‘reuse’, have dramatically positive impacts on the amounts of household waste generated. However, rarely has the African household been given the same consideration, and there is a poor understanding within the discipline how poor individuals, and Africans in…
“It is unbearable to breathe here”
Blantyre, Malawi’s Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH), or Queen’s, as it’s known locally, is the country’s largest public hospital. However, Queen’s is not served by regular municipal waste collection. Rather, most hospital waste (infectious and non-infectious) is gathered by grounds staff and openly burned, in several constantly smouldering piles, sending up clouds of smoke. Speaking directly to an identified knowledge gap on air quality im…
The rich will always be able to dispose of their waste”
A significant proportion of South African municipalities, who hold the mandate for providing solid waste management (SWM) services for millions of South Africans, appear to be on the brink of collapse. On the frontlines of municipal failure, the city of Makhanda, following two decades of poor governance and mismanagement, has found itself unable to fulfil its mandate, with the state retreating on SWM service provision, and disruptions to waste ma…
Absorbent hygiene products disposal behaviour in informal settlements
Our findings confirmed the link between poor mental health and unsanitary AHPs disposal. This is especially relevant because poor mental health is common within South Africa. Addressing mental health problems within these communities is an essential step to providing sustainable waste management services. The findings informed an intervention strategy to implement a future collection system for these communities, and similar low-income or informa…
From failure to fairness
The purpose of this perspective piece is to advocate for a paradigm shift in biogas research, and argues for the need to centre accountability and justice in household biogas development research and discussion Drawing from biogas literature and the authors' own experiences in South Asia and Southern Africa, the perspective illustrates how a lack of accountability in biogas programmes has led to negative outcomes and harm to beneficiaries of top-…
Not just a donor learning experience
In Africa, investments in domestic biogas projects have yielded mixed results, with numerous poor outcomes reported. While many commonly cited barriers contribute to these failures, the role of structural issues rooted in development and aid remains underexplored and poorly understood. This investigation examined 72 tarpaulin-based biogas digesters funded by UNDP across seven districts in Malawi, which experienced rapid failure shortly after impl…
Adam cried bitterly
This article explores how urban Malawians construct moral and theological meaning of waste and how these constructions shape environmental practices, in densely populated areas of Blantyre. Challenging the assumption that environmental behaviour can be improved primarily through education, the study argues that moral action is grounded in contextual ‘immanent logics’ shaped by lived experience, social realities and religious belief. Drawing on in…
Rethinking socio-cultural resistance
Toilet-linked anaerobic digesters (TLADs) are promoted as technologies that can simultaneously address household energy, sanitation, and agricultural needs, yet diffusion remains uneven, and project failures are frequently attributed to “socio-cultural resistance.” This paper challenges that narrative by examining why Nepal's domestic biogas programme achieved greater success in implementing TLADs than India's, despite broadly similar policies an…
Political science (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Engineering (10 works) · Business (8 works) · Geography (8 works) · Economics (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Municipal Solid Waste Management (7 works) · Urban and Rural Development Challenges (7 works) · Waste management (6 works)