schaffer_seeds


 * Memo 43: Seed Research**

There are several things I am //itching to do//:


 * Interviews with Troy Compost members** with the aim of developing a picture of their imaginaries of waste stewardship, their framing of the waste problem, and some elicitations of the interactions between waste and public participation in sociotechnical governance. Interview ~12 people from different subcommittees who have taken different paths to join the group; definitely include Abby Lublin, some {aging hippies}, some local farmers, some businesspeople, and some RPI students. Use this as a means of: (1) eliciting articulations of the work of the group/the ideals of the group that can become fodder for discussion; (2) eliciting statements that can look good in a Troy Record or other local publication in order to advertise these efforts (and make me money); (3) eliciting articulations that can help me to locate Troy Compost vis-à-vis the contemporary waste regime for maybe a conference paper.


 * Discourse analysis of waste policy documents** and perhaps other sorts of waste-based discourse. Waste policy will be interesting in terms of locating how the current waste system constructs/conceives of the waste-producing subject and the role of government/business in managing the waste generated by citizens. Most likely look at EPA reports on waste/recommendations on waste management/code, but would love to be able to examine internal documents from DPW in places that have changed their policies in interesting ways at unusual times. This could help me to pin down some hegemonic articulations of the wasting subject and look for shifts in these articulations in places where waste policy shifts. Question: can I get a DPW to give me internal memos and records?

My effort at producing an **autoethnography of waste affects** started out as a research journal, but quickly turned into a place for me to write down what it feels like when I throw things away. Continuing to do this on a daily basis, recording the emotional processes by which I dissociate myself from my stuff, sort out different sorts of garbage, pick things out of the trash, grumble like Marge Simpson when my friends throw away coffee lids, and throw—as if in a dream—a whole cutting board full of sweet potato peels into the trash rather than the compost. I will also record my perception of other processes that produce waste and the processes by which waste gets managed once it has been labeled as such. In taking the time to write this down and examine it, I hope to get closer to an understanding of my personal waste ethic, and try to figure out what such a beast as a “waste ethic” looks like, and to puzzle out where it might come from.


 * Waste maps** might be useful for describing what happens to the US waste stream. They’d have obvious use for waste activism (Look at all this stuff! It goes to stupid places!) but in terms of understanding large-scale flows, it could be a means of pointing toward future work. At the moment, it seems like simply mapping the destinations of waste from several municipalities in New York State could be useful.


 * Waste timelines** in cooperation with waste maps could help me to locate the emergence of the modern waste regime and the development of efforts to change it.


 * Interviews with resource management employees/officials/policymakers** could help me to characterize the waste ethics and waste imaginaries of people in locations of possible change within the waste regime, figure out how they conceive of their work, the waste they collect.

I think it’d be a good idea to **collect background materials on public controversies around waste policy** in the US, such as those around trash cams in Florida and Houston, TerraCycle and its mission to make unattractive consumer goods out of waste, or bag taxes that might possibly be increasing the spread of salmonella. Creating a folder of kinks in the waste regime could help me to connect these perturbations to a larger waste picture.