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Waste's translations

Estuaries, marine life, and the chemistry of Mumbai's dumping grounds

Bibliographic Data

ID2261509
AuthorsChitra (0000-0003-2155-5200, Department of Sociology National University of Singapore 11 Arts Link, #03‐06 AS1 Singapore 117573), V Chitra (0000-0002-7533-9039, National University of Singapore, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume48
Issue4
Pages337-356
Publication date2021-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Ethnologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-0496 • E-ISSN: 1548-1425
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/amet.13047
OpenAlexW4200505632
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited50

Mumbai's dumping grounds, located on the city's estuarine edge, are sites where garbage and marsh are turned into salable land. This process of translating waste into land depends on keeping matter, beings, and landscapes separate and on limiting their interactions. Yet waste and the marsh interact and transform in ways that escape managerial discourse, revealing a haze of category and control errors that complicate knowledge, agency, and responsibility. While developers translate waste to land in relation to developmental goals, fishing communities, scientists, and activists translate it differently: scientists translate it in relation to chemical properties, interactions, and timelines; marine-life activists draw attention to its coastal ecologies; and fisher communities look for productive possibilities on a polluted shore. These translations attend to the inseparability of waste substances from the coast and its futures. They articulate a politics that acknowledges waste's sociopolitics, material agency, temporalities, and multispecies ethics. [coast, waste, development, pollution, marine life, ecology, chemistry, Mumbai

Agency (philosophy · Environmental ethics · Garbage · Marsh · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Temporalities · Waste management · Wetland · Ecology · Engineering · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Water Governance and Infrastructure

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Unique citing works10
Citations per year2,5
Citation span2022 - 2026 (5)
Citation velocitycurrent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 10
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