A labor of disassembly

Waste labor and embodied knowledge in China's circular economy

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4476387
AutoresA Zhang (0000-0003-4353-745X, New York University, NY, USA, autor de correspondencia)
Año2025
Fecha de publicación2025-09-16
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/02637758251375293
OpenAlexW4414226846
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas70

This article examines waste labor in relation to contemporary projects of green capitalism, specifically China's pursuit of the circular economy and the development of ecological cities. The circular economy repositions waste not as disposable matter but as a resource frontier, proposing its reintegration back into systems of production. China's adoption of the circular economy signals a shift in how waste is conceptualized at the center of the state's vision of green growth. Drawing on recent writings on the role of circulation and logistics and efforts to remake waste into a site of extraction, I consider the ways in which the labor of informal scrap collectors constitutes an infrastructure of disassembly, creating a network of reverse logistics to facilitate economies of recuperation and reproduction. I show how material practices of waste labor represent a continuity between past and present state projects of material recuperation from the Maoist period to new ecological cities. In China's emerging "green cities," the recuperation of scrap matter is facilitated by a labor of disassembly-an affective and embodied social labor that relies on collectors' keen and embodied knowledge of scrap matter and on their ability to cultivate horizontal social relations in the city

Mining and Resource Management · Recycling and Waste Management Techniques · Water Governance and Infrastructure