schaffer_schedule_2


 * Schedule of Activities **

// September-December 2012 // :
 * Preliminary work with Citizen’s Working Group on Composting (CWG-C) to develop report to City Council. Weekly meetings at group member’s houses, unstructured interviews with waste managers, reading reports and searching out information on extant composting systems, writing report and editing material produced by other members of the working group.
 * Preliminary literature search: debates over ecological modernization theory, social history of waste.

// January-March 2013 // :
 * Participant observation with newly formed “Troy Compost” group. Involves coordinating actors, fielding questions, envisioning plans, leading discussions, maintaining a website.
 * Continued literature search on discard studies, social theory of waste, governance of waste.
 * Informal, preliminary interviews with members of Troy Compost. Particularly Abby Lublin.
 * Generate data structures for collection of data on neighborhood compost sites.

// April-May 2013 // :
 * Work with Neighborhood-Scale Composting Working Group as they implement pilot piles. Includes participant observation at pilot sites, semi-structured interviews with members of coordinating group from Transition Troy, RPI, and neighborhood gardens, shorter interviews with user of each pile.
 * Maintain a compost pile.
 * Continued literature search.
 * Present preliminary plans at grad student conference.
 * Poster at Rensselaer’s Earth Week Festival.
 * Meetings with community visioning groups to discuss possibility of compost mapping.
 * Discourse analysis of PAYT policy documents.
 * Archival work with Geoff Glenn of Spokane, WA Solid Waste Management, investigating Spokane's early implementation of PAYT.

// June-August 2013 // :
 * Continue work with coordinating groups, maintenance of compost sites.
 * Author article with Abby Kinchy on toxic waste.
 * Begin contacting industrial composting sites, compost consultants. Inquire after interviews, internships for participant observation opportunities.
 * Assemble portfolio.
 * Further work with Spokane folks. Think about whether findings on PAYT are interesting enough to merit article, or simply a section of a chapter of dissertation.
 * Master composter course.

// September-December 2013 // : >
 * Continue coordinating groups, monitoring compost sites, participant observing at meetings and conducting semi-structured interviews of participants.
 * Turn some of research into promotional materials for Troy Compost.
 * Present preliminary findings at 4S.
 * Conduct on-site interviews at Peninsula Compost facility in Delaware, BIG! NYC compost sites, Baltimore facility.
 * Continue literature search, focusing on environmental governance.
 * Write literature review.
 * Contact discard scholars I respect. Ask them questions about this work!
 * First draft of article based on 4S presentation.

// January-May 2014 // :
 * Present at American Composting Council Conference in Florida; use this opportunity for networking, collecting names for interviews.
 * While in Florida, hunt down “food cams” in Elementary School Lunchrooms. Try to score an interview! {Are we allowed to say “score” in ethnography? Or do we schedule them?}
 * Write dissertation proposal.
 * Write HASS proposal.
 * Investigate mapping software?
 * Preliminary data analysis from neighborhood composting sites. Work to produce graphs that are both useless and evocative. Work to produce other graphs that can convince city council of utility of neighborhood compost sites.
 * Continue organizing work.
 * Begin submitting 4S presentation article to things.
 * Assemble dissertation committee.

// June-August 2014 // :
 * Continue organizing work.
 * Begin to gather up smaller case studies on unusual trends in waste management (trash cams, bag taxes, etc) to enrich account of waste systems change.
 * Decide whether mapping projects are worthwhile or not.
 * Draft article based on PAYT DA findings, interviews with waste managers. Figure out what else I need.

// September-December 2014 // :
 * Present at 4S analysis focused on ecological modernization with compost, differentiating from debates around recycling.
 * Continue organizing work. Along with other organizers, reflect on experiences and begin drafting guides to creating closed resource loops in your own hometown.
 * Keep abreast of waste-related news, research, etc.
 * Embrace role as trash guy.

January-December 2015:
 * Along with other organizers, present on putting together community composting system at US composting council conference.
 * Continue organizing work.
 * Amass odd sources of discourse on wasting: lefty docs on trash; waste in pop culture; anything George Bataille has done; zines on dumpster diving; that episode of project runway where they have to make outfits out of recyclables. Keep these on hand either to insert into dissertation for entertainment value, or as important DA component of dissertation.
 * Send drafts of dissertation to compost activists, compost organizers. Ask for input.
 * As distraction from stress of disseration, start blog initially intended as an outlet for poop jokes, slowly turn it into site for serious discussions of waste practices.

January-May 2016:
 * Continue organizing work.
 * Finish dissertation. Submit dissertation.
 * Take a bubblebath. Bake compulsively. More bubblebaths.
 * Revise dissertation.
 * Defend dissertation.