[Geogwaste] abstract looking for session

[Freyja Knapp]

Hi Waste Friends!

A colleague of mine at Berkeley (in geography) is looking for a session for
his paper at AAG.  He lost his spot in the session he was expecting to be in
because they wanted papers more focused on energy.  I thought his work would
fit well with some of the waste sessions I've seen floating around - if any
of you know of more, please forward away!

thanks and hope to see you at AAG this year!  I'm giving a 'mining' paper
this year... exploring the other side to my 'waste'

Freyja

Abstract for Adam Romero        adam.romero at berkeley.edu

Dark Value? Rethinking Waste and the Crises of Capitalism


Orthodox economic theory treats waste and pollution simply as a cost,
usually externalized, which is incidental but otherwise unrelated to the
production of value.   In this paper I explore new ways of thinking about
the interplay of waste, pollution, scale, environmental crisis, and the
production, circulation, and realization of value.  Drawing examples from
the creation of the German dyestuffs industry, the chemicalization and
standardization of California agriculture, and the production of alleged
pollution abating environmental commodities, I argue that because
insufficient attention has been paid to what constitutes an environmental
crisis under capitalism, waste and pollution as a potential source of value
production, circulation, and realization has been undertheorized as an
outlet for overproduction and overaccumulation.  The reproduction of capital
is premised on processes of substitution, replacement, simulation,
opposition, and transformation, and often the objects of these processes are
coaxed from the waste piles and pollution streams of industrial production.
Waste and pollution under capitalist modernity is a polycephalous beast,
thus conceptualizing and theorizing waste is fraught with complications and
competing approaches.  This paper is an attempt to bring some disparate
thoughts about waste and pollution to bear on value theory and the crises of
capitalism.

-- 
Freyja Knapp, MLA
PhD Student, Dept of Environmental Science, Policy & Management
University of California, Berkeley
email: freyja (at) berkeley (dot) edu
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