Between Toxics and Gold
Devaluing Informal Labor in the Global Urban Mine
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3833763 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Julia Corwin, Julia Eleanor Corwin (0000-0002-6460-2129, London School of Economics and Political Science, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 106-123 |
| Publication date | 2020-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Capitalism Nature Socialism (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1045-5752 • E-ISSN: 1548-3290 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10455752.2019.1690533 |
| OpenAlex | W2991462413 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 34 |
Environmental discourses on electronic waste have converged around two framings of e-waste as a significant global concern: as a polluting and hazardous waste product, and as an under-tapped source of value: an "urban mine." This paper argues that the discursive shift between these two framings is not based in material differences between either the electronics themselves or related labor processes; instead, the major determining factor in e-waste's categorization as hazard or resource is based on the category of labor working on it and where it is located. Drawing on research in India's used electronics industry, this paper argues that when associated with informal labor in the Global South, e-waste is easily devalued and judged a hazardous waste through devaluing the labor that works on it. The conflation of pollution with informal labor in the Global South offers such a powerful narrative, particularly in governance and industry circles, that it has become a significant way to devalue e-waste in the Global South, opening up "new" frontiers of value that would otherwise be captured by local, predominantly informal, industry. Thus, environmental concerns about the hazards of e-waste can be used to secure corporate e-waste markets through devaluing informal labor
Business · Conflation · Economic growth · Economics · Electronic waste · Environmental hazard · Hazard · Hazardous waste · Informal sector · Labor relations · Political science · Waste management · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Engineering · Law · Recycling and Waste Management Techniques · Water Governance and Infrastructure
Incendiary Devices
Reordering labour, value, and informality in Accra’s e-waste economy
Cambridge, Carnaval, and the ‘Actually Existing Circularity’ of Plastics
E-waste is toxic, but for whom? The body politics of knowing toxic flows in Delhi
Doing the work
Working the Waste Commodity Frontier
Geographies of Exclusion
Capitalism, nature, socialism
Mapping Environmental Justice in Technology Flows
Doing the ‘dirty work’ of the green economy
Making chains that (un)make things
The hustle economy
Mapping the Invisible and Real "African" Economy
Generation and Management of Electronic Waste in India
Contesting Urban Metabolism
Illicit economies
The enclosure of “waste land”
The work of waste
Producing abjection
Deterritorializing Extraction
Alternative framings of transnational waste flows
Re‐making spaces of conversion
Circling the economy
Are we living in a post‐ B asel world
Terra Economica
From Waste to Resource
Why India Cannot Plan Its Cities
The changing geography of global trade in electronic discards
Accumulation by dispossession and the informal economy - Struggles over knowledge, being and waste at a Soweto garbage dump
Nothing is useless in nature
The birth of the flexible mine
Political Ecologies of Electronic Waste
Six theses on waste, value, and commons
They Come in Peasants and Leave Citizens
| Unique citing works | 7 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,4 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 7 |