Waqas H Butt
Biographic Data
| ID | 157265 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Waqas H Butt |
| GIVEN NAMES | Waqas H |
| FAMILY NAME | Butt |
| SIGNATURE | BUTT W H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Toronto Scarborough |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3221-4455 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 7 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 33 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 7 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
South Asian Urban Climates
This Interventions essay presents 14 stories of, and positions on, urban climates in South Asia. The authors analyze the terms 'mahaul,' 'mausam,' and 'aab-o-hawa' as critical concepts to conceptualize climate in its political, social, historical, atmospheric, ecological, material, sensory, and embodied registers. The stories connect concerns about broader structural conditions ('mahaul'); local and lived experiences in different temporal registe…
Accessing Value in Lahore's Waste Infrastructures
Lahore's ever-growing waste generation has taken on increasing political significance - but why and how has this happened? This article argues that ways of knowing waste as one thing, and not another, shape how actors in Lahore's waste infrastructures materialise value out of waste materials. For several decades, waste workers have been receiving payment for carrying away waste materials and making a profit by selling recyclables, which required …
Technics of Labor
In Lahore, a public-private partnership has been formed to replace the Solid Waste Management (SWM) Department. Along with technological and managerial interventions into the labor process, this partnership has also brought in a class of professionals whose expertise is viewed as being essential to improving solid waste management for the city. Nevertheless, a labor force of sanitation workers and supervisors from the municipal SWM Department rem…
Waste intimacies
In cities around the world, the removal of waste materials is a critical part of everyday life. Workers, both formal and informal, engage in intimate forms of labor that separate these materials from those who produce them. In Lahore, Pakistan, such waste intimacies are fraught by inequalities, which are discernible in affective, material, and spatial relations stretching across an uneven urban landscape. Waste work in urban Pakistan is a social …
Beyond the Abject
This article examines the historical processes by which low or non-caste groups have situated themselves in Pakistan's waste economy. Adopting caste as a category of governance, the colonial regime implemented policies and interventions that not only impacted these groups in the Punjab, but also cemented enduring connections between caste, waste work, and governance, which have subsequently shaped the trajectories of waste work in cities like Lah…
The Archive of Loss
Reviewed by: The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land Mumbai by Maura Finkelstein Waqas H. Butt Maura Finkelstein, The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land Mumbai, Durham: Duke University Press, 2019. 252 pp. Bombay’s first textile mills opened in 1854. A decade prior, arguably one of the first texts of urban anthropology was published: The Condition of the Working Class in England (Engels 2009). In it, Engels luridly catalogu…
Distributing destruction
Alongside a growing population and expanding built environment, the construction of large-scale infrastructures, mostly related to transportation, has radically altered Lahore’s landscape. This paper explores how waste in the form of debris, smog and dust is produced and proliferates throughout the process of construction. In drawing upon the notion of atmospheric attunements, this paper argues that waste not only takes different forms, but also …
Waste intimacies
In cities around the world, the removal of waste materials is a critical part of everyday life. Workers, both formal and informal, engage in intimate forms of labor that separate these materials from those who produce them. In Lahore, Pakistan, such waste intimacies are fraught by inequalities, which are discernible in affective, material, and spatial relations stretching across an uneven urban landscape. Waste work in urban Pakistan is a social …
Beyond the Abject
This article examines the historical processes by which low or non-caste groups have situated themselves in Pakistan's waste economy. Adopting caste as a category of governance, the colonial regime implemented policies and interventions that not only impacted these groups in the Punjab, but also cemented enduring connections between caste, waste work, and governance, which have subsequently shaped the trajectories of waste work in cities like Lah…
Accessing Value in Lahore's Waste Infrastructures
Lahore's ever-growing waste generation has taken on increasing political significance - but why and how has this happened? This article argues that ways of knowing waste as one thing, and not another, shape how actors in Lahore's waste infrastructures materialise value out of waste materials. For several decades, waste workers have been receiving payment for carrying away waste materials and making a profit by selling recyclables, which required …
Distributing destruction
Alongside a growing population and expanding built environment, the construction of large-scale infrastructures, mostly related to transportation, has radically altered Lahore’s landscape. This paper explores how waste in the form of debris, smog and dust is produced and proliferates throughout the process of construction. In drawing upon the notion of atmospheric attunements, this paper argues that waste not only takes different forms, but also …
South Asian Urban Climates
This Interventions essay presents 14 stories of, and positions on, urban climates in South Asia. The authors analyze the terms 'mahaul,' 'mausam,' and 'aab-o-hawa' as critical concepts to conceptualize climate in its political, social, historical, atmospheric, ecological, material, sensory, and embodied registers. The stories connect concerns about broader structural conditions ('mahaul'); local and lived experiences in different temporal registe…
Technics of Labor
In Lahore, a public-private partnership has been formed to replace the Solid Waste Management (SWM) Department. Along with technological and managerial interventions into the labor process, this partnership has also brought in a class of professionals whose expertise is viewed as being essential to improving solid waste management for the city. Nevertheless, a labor force of sanitation workers and supervisors from the municipal SWM Department rem…
Distributing destruction
Alongside a growing population and expanding built environment, the construction of large-scale infrastructures, mostly related to transportation, has radically altered Lahore’s landscape. This paper explores how waste in the form of debris, smog and dust is produced and proliferates throughout the process of construction. In drawing upon the notion of atmospheric attunements, this paper argues that waste not only takes different forms, but also …
Beyond the Abject
This article examines the historical processes by which low or non-caste groups have situated themselves in Pakistan's waste economy. Adopting caste as a category of governance, the colonial regime implemented policies and interventions that not only impacted these groups in the Punjab, but also cemented enduring connections between caste, waste work, and governance, which have subsequently shaped the trajectories of waste work in cities like Lah…
The Archive of Loss
Reviewed by: The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land Mumbai by Maura Finkelstein Waqas H. Butt Maura Finkelstein, The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land Mumbai, Durham: Duke University Press, 2019. 252 pp. Bombay’s first textile mills opened in 1854. A decade prior, arguably one of the first texts of urban anthropology was published: The Condition of the Working Class in England (Engels 2009). In it, Engels luridly catalogu…
Technics of Labor
In Lahore, a public-private partnership has been formed to replace the Solid Waste Management (SWM) Department. Along with technological and managerial interventions into the labor process, this partnership has also brought in a class of professionals whose expertise is viewed as being essential to improving solid waste management for the city. Nevertheless, a labor force of sanitation workers and supervisors from the municipal SWM Department rem…
Waste intimacies
In cities around the world, the removal of waste materials is a critical part of everyday life. Workers, both formal and informal, engage in intimate forms of labor that separate these materials from those who produce them. In Lahore, Pakistan, such waste intimacies are fraught by inequalities, which are discernible in affective, material, and spatial relations stretching across an uneven urban landscape. Waste work in urban Pakistan is a social …
South Asian Urban Climates
This Interventions essay presents 14 stories of, and positions on, urban climates in South Asia. The authors analyze the terms 'mahaul,' 'mausam,' and 'aab-o-hawa' as critical concepts to conceptualize climate in its political, social, historical, atmospheric, ecological, material, sensory, and embodied registers. The stories connect concerns about broader structural conditions ('mahaul'); local and lived experiences in different temporal registe…
Accessing Value in Lahore's Waste Infrastructures
Lahore's ever-growing waste generation has taken on increasing political significance - but why and how has this happened? This article argues that ways of knowing waste as one thing, and not another, shape how actors in Lahore's waste infrastructures materialise value out of waste materials. For several decades, waste workers have been receiving payment for carrying away waste materials and making a profit by selling recyclables, which required …
Water Governance and Infrastructure (7 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Urban Planning and Governance (4 works) · Geography (3 works) · Political science (3 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (2 works) · Business (2 works) · Capitalism (2 works) · Caste (2 works) · Computer Science (2 works)