Materiality and the Recovery of Discarded Materials in a Buenos Aires Cartonero Cooperative

CARENZO, SEBASTIÁN

Discourse Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture

Wayne State University Press

Lugar: Detroit; Año: 2016 vol. 38 p. 176 - 199

One phenomenon that distinguishes the discussion of waste management in the large urban centers of the global South is the existence of sizeable population groups devoted to the collection and sorting of recyclable materials as a livelihood. In Argentina, a vast body of literature is devoted to the work of the so-called cartoneros (waste pickers), addressing their work of collection and recycling as well as the formal and informal commercial circuits driven by their activity. Although these circuits constitute another instance of the age-old linkage between?things and people,? it is striking how seldom studies of material culture have inspired treatments of this topic at the local level.In this article I will explore this topic focusing on the specific production of a material culture associated with the disposal, collection, sorting, packaging, and recycling of waste materials. I will ethnographically analyze the relational fabric that links resident sof a middle class neighborhood with cartoneros from a cooperative based in a nearby shanty town. My analysis focuses on the moral disputes that arise in and through the trafficking of objects that are discarded as ?trash? by middle-class residents and then recuperated as materials by the cartoneros. I argue that in the course of these objects? itinerary, they do not simply pass ?from one hand to another,? but traverse what Zsuzsa Gille has referred to as?waste regimes,?thereby acquiring and embodying different, and often contradictory, values and meanings. I particularly seek to account for the way in which the distinctions that mark the transition from one regime to another are constructed (from trash to value). These distinctions, which are expressed in the types and qualities of objects that pass through different circuits, have profound implications for the individuals and groups who handle those objects and conduct transactions with them,because they contribute to the moral definition of the individuals involved in these multiple acts of transfer.