An anthropologist view of

recycling

Cecilia Montero Mórtola

2011

Colonia Germany

Expiriences and Methogology

M : Participant Observation, “research and action”

fieldwork and documental research

• Reasearch in Migration and food : Barcelona 2003-2010

• Organization and participation of workshops with plastic bags and

bottles and paper

• “Ethnoyoutobegrafía” and google docs view

• Participation in events and exhibitions of Drap Art, 15-M, Fiestas

de Gràcia, etc.

• Aply Lingüistics in teaching methods.

• Publication of articles and conferences about Antrhopology an

Recycling

Migration

14.12.2008

Recycling and Languages

Teachers and students, kids and adults

Kids

Drap Art 2010-11

Indignados May 2011

Pl. Cataluña

2

19 -J

Fiestas de Gràcia

Gràcia Neibourghoud party

From ciberspace to the reality and viceversa

• Plastic Bag Crafts

• Find many craft projects using plastic bags. A great way to craft green and recycle plastic

grocery and (clean) garbage bags.

• Dog Bed

• 'Just', a visitor, shares these directions for making a bed for your dog.

• Fabric Sit-Upons

• Instructions to make a small cushion to sit on outside. Great simple sewing project!

• Sponsored Links

• Plastic Craft SuppliersFind & Contact Low-Cost Suppliers See why so many

businesses trust uswww.alibaba.com

• Plastic BagsFind Industrial Services Solutions For Your Business. Get It Done

Now!www.business.com

• PVC & Packaging bagsWe supply various PVC bags & packaging bag from

China!www.pvc-bag-pvc.com

• Film Container Parachute

• Instructions for making a parachute using an empty film container, shared by

MCWARD68.

• Garbage Bag Ghost Craft

• Find out how to make a ghost decoration or prop using a plastic bag and a few other

supplies.

• Garbage Bag Spider

• Instructions for making a LARGE spider using a garbage bag and a few other supplies.

• Ghastly Ghosts

• These home made ghosts, ranging from tiny to large, are great additions to your

haunted

Dimensions of the anthropological analysis

• MaterialThe specific relation with object material orients in several levels an

possibilities for the analyses

• Social

Symbolic, actitudinal, lingüísitic, artistic in differents ambits of the societies and on the Web

• Environmental

• Policy and politic

• Economic

• They are interdependent, are detached only for the study of the phenomenon of the present recycling

MaterialEach material already offers - in itself - possibilities, difficulties and limits on different levels

• Type of… Paper, clothes, plastic, metal, organic, stone, wood, etc.

• State….New, old, leftover, “imperfect”, broken, rest, surplus, remainder, forgotten, high, etc.

• Source ….extracted”, from interchanged… , donated, anticipated, thrown, recovered, stolen, inherited, found etc.

Symbolic dimensions

When we separate, reuse, recycle and reduce,

a range of significant classifications are applied

Pure-impure - fashionable - fashionable past - New-old - complete-incomplete

-the time of the vital cycle - the interchange

… Dirty- clean - profiteer, recovered, recovered

Useful-useless - fixed, repaired, reconstructed - expensive –

renewed, updated,

Expensive - renewed, up dated, Art-crafts, fraud

– sacrated - profane - good and bad ““ecological”- recycled” “nature”etc.

All of these ..and more…

according to the class, the ethnic group, the religion, the gender, the age, the profession and the social historical context.

What hinders or promotes these ways of thought and behaviour?

knowledge and attitudes

The capacity to “leave and enter” and “to transform” the classification system of the current community, and to stay

connected to it.

• S. Strasser – The rubbish= dynamic category

• C. Lévi-Strauss – “ bricoloured” Intelligence and the

metaphor of the fisherman

• M. Douglas, D. Miller. U. Beck - Degrees of impact of the culture of consumption, policies - (changes in both)

Proposal qualitative study in complex itineraries that relate scenes,

people and materials for the obtaining of ethnographic data

prived/public - rural /urban-

earth water air social + rubish..

Bourdieu : social sand, field ………

schools: teachers, students, authorities, personnel of cleanning, parents, monitors. What do they say, what do they do…about recycling?

Note of fieldwork diary July 2010, School in BCN

““Everything is in fact shit” “What wonder” “Ah, yes my son recycles everything, everything” “the greater one

already made 10 wallets of tetrabrick”

- To analyze contradictions –

- To aply the sense of humor -

Domestic space, hospitals, factories, groups, shared families, sharedflats, stores, factories, etc…

2

• Consumption puts individuals and objects into a relationship to each other and also to their waste.

• Necessity of a comparative study of the social perceptions , Archaeological and anthropological qualitative analyses urban, etc.

• To identify projects of social inclusion (second hand clothes, furniture recovery, tins, etc.)

• To identify healthy districts and cities (plastic bags, tins, paper, furniture, etc.)

• To construct the local history of waste in order to see continuities and discontinuities in the prospect of the studies.

• To analyse the reasons and objectives of the presence of the “original art” and “recycling art” within a local and international view.

• Observation and study of the material culture, patrimonial culture, etc. • .

Politic and Policies

• Public vs Domestic policies

• Coherence? Pamphlets and… more pamphlets!

• Green versus shortermers

• Appropriation of speech – deceivers

• The relevance of the social groups

• Necessity of educative transmission Sustainability, a revealing concept

in practice

Economy

• Consumer society - “Consumers and non citizens, not people”

tension between the concept and the reality; created economic crisis

and the immediate benefit

• Excessive growth “Progress, development and evolution”! Alert in

the speech!!!

• Dissociation of the other dimensions and at their expense

• Ideology of the use and waste.

What happens during recycling?

• Union of the physical (body), psychological and the social

representations: TO THINK and also ACT not only speech

• To recreate classification systems, to individualize them vs.

“Individualitis alienatis”

• To leave the dictate of the market

• To create new economies

• To take care of the environment. .this returns!

Homo Reciclaris

Homo sapiens, economicus, festivus,… sapiens!

• It thinks about and it works with the objects, it reclassifies them, returns them to the

cycle of exchange with others in variable forms

• The Homo reciclaris of each individual has always has been there; it emerges in the

middle of the 20th century and it unfolds in the 21st as an expression of the social,

environmental and cultural relation to give continuity to the human life.

• “If you only consume, you alienate yourself. If you recycle you think.

We are Homos Reciclaris.” CM

Authors

Anthropilogists

C.Lévi -Strauss : Structural and Symbolic Anthropology, and of Art

M. Mauss : Theories of the interchange

P. Bourdieu : Concept of Social Sand, concep of “style”

N .García Canclini : Globalization

M. Douglas and physical anthropology and theories of the complexity : Religion, Simbolic Anthropology, Theories of risk

M. Goicoechea : Physical anthropology and theories of the complexity

Social scientists

R. Sennet - sociologist : crafts

S. Strasser - historian : trash

D. Miller - anthropolgist : objects and consumption

J. Boticello - antrhopologist : textil recycling

L. Norris - anthropologist : textil recycling

C. Montero - anthropologist : food and plastic recycling

H. Tizio - psychoanalyst : theories of affective relationship

A. Leonard - economist : news economies and recycling

E. Morin - philosopher : theories of ecology and complexity

Pending tasks for Social Sciences

• To study the borders of the discipline with the subject

• To develop states of the question

• To interact with other disciplines

• To perform scientific research and case studies, to create

research groups, publications, observatories, etc. in order to

create methodologies and an Anthropology of Recycling

Cecilia Montero Mórtola

Phd in Anthropology

and

Teacher of Spanish(Member of ICAF Int. Com. of Anthropology of Food – Tecaher of Anthropology in UNED –

Bess School- Gresc@-UAB)

Antrhopology of Recycling

**Independient Research*

Gratefulness

To Feria Oekorausch, Colonia and A Drap Art. Barcelona

Translation to : Benjamin Schuster

Mail ceciguimontero@gmail.com