The Logistics of Waste

Engineering, Capital Accumulation, and the Growth of Mexico City

Datos Bibliográficos

ID10962871
AutoresDean Chahim (0000-0003-3318-6297, Department of Sociology and Anthropology University of Texas at El Paso El Paso TX USA, autor de correspondencia)
Año2025
Volumen57
Número5
Páginas1614-1638
Fecha de publicación2025-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAntipode (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0066-4812 • E-ISSN: 1467-8330
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/anti.12864
OpenAlexW4286447997
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas41

How is capital accumulation sustained in the Anthropocene, even as it threatens to overwhelm everyone—capitalists included—in ever‐growing quantities of waste? This paper examines this question at the metropolitan scale, focusing on the growth of Greater Mexico City. In a bid to spur capital accumulation, governments across the megacity increasingly push for new urban developments that encroach on the already‐strained drainage system, limiting its capacity to prevent floods. To protect these developments, state engineers now regularly divert wastewater through the homes and streets of marginalised areas of the metropolis. Even as these diversions turn marginal neighbourhoods into ephemeral waste conduits, the transience of wastewaters and the complexity of engineers’ operations limit the possibilities for collective resistance. This calculative management of the flows of waste—here termed the logistics of waste—is a critical yet understudied way engineering sustains the accumulation of capital and limits popular resistance to elite‐led projects of endless growth

Anthropocene · Business · Capital (architecture · Capital accumulation · Economic growth · Economics · Economy · Environmental planning · Ephemeral key · Geography · Human capital · Limiting · Megacity · Metropolitan area · Natural resource economics · Resistance (ecology · Engineering · Environmental Science · Urban Planning and Governance · Water Governance and Infrastructure