Reclaiming the Discarded: Life and Labor on Rio's Garbage Dump

In Reclaiming the Discarded Kathleen M. Millar offers an evocative ethnography of Jardim Gramacho, a sprawling garbage dump on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, where roughly two thousand self-employed workers known as catadores collect recyclable materials. While the figure of the scavenger sifting through garbage seems iconic of wageless life today, Millar shows how the work of reclaiming recyclables is more than a survival strategy or an informal labor practice. Rather, the stories of catadores show how this work is inseparable from conceptions of the good life and from human struggles to realize these visions within precarious conditions of urban poverty. By approaching the work of catadores as highly generative, Millar calls into question the category of informality, common conceptions of garbage, and the continued normativity of wage labor. In so doing, she illuminates how waste lies at the heart of relations of inequality and projects of social transformation.

Author: Kathleen M. Millar
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 02/13/2018
Pages: 248
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.60d
ISBN13: 9780822370505
ISBN10: 0822370506
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social
- History | Latin America | South America
- Social Science | Sociology | Urban

About the Author
Kathleen M. Millar is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Simon Fraser University.