Currently reading: Susan Strasser – Waste and Want: The Other Side of Consumption (Berg Publishers 1992) with comments by Gunther Barth and Wolfgang Erz
http://www.ghi-dc.org/publications/ghipubs/annual/al05.pdf
(This paper preceded Susan Strasser’s book Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, Owl Books, NY, 2000.)
Hartmut Lehmann introduces Strasser as “engaged in research on the history of what modern society discards as useless: Müll, garbage, trash, debris; those ever-growing piles of waste that modern society produces; piles of waste that have become a serious environmental problem, but that distinguish our age most clearly from previous ones.” (p.3)
As a historian, Strasser’s paper is described by Barth as an “historical enquiry into waste and want” and by Erz as a methodological approach.
In defining waste in her opening gambit, Strasser outlines the following definition: “Waste” suggests not only useless consumption—squandering, extravagance, and indulgence—but dissipation, destruction, and death; the last a verb form often associated with the American war in Vietnam, where “to waste” meant “to kill.” Waste means decline, as in “wasting away.”
Waste and want is garbage meets consumer culture. (p.5)
Strasser cites Mary Douglas, in Purity and Danger (London, 1966), describing dirt as a cultural construct and as matter out of place. (p.7)
Strasser asks: In addition to the essentially archaeological questions What is in the trash? and How has that changed over time?, we must ask what has stayed out of the trash. (p.8)
In terms of the process of discarding, Strasser proposes: “As a normal household process, disposal may be understood to involve the literal, spacial interface between the private and the public.” (p.8)
In economic terms: “Described as a problem of poverty at the beginning of the century, garbage is now understood as a problem of affluence. .. Poor people waste less than the rich.” (p.9)
On product disposability: “Disposable products, designed to be thrown away after brief use, constituted another new kind of trash. The concept was inaugurated with paper shirt cuffs and paper collars, which first appeared during the cotton shortage of the Civil War; the collars were almost universal by the 1870s. [..] A new concept of disposability extended far beyond paper products. Chewing gum was disposable food; cigarettes were disposable smoking devices.” (p.18)
“Economic growth is fueled by waste—the garbage created by extravagant packaging and disposables—and by the constant change that makes usable objects obsolete and creates markets for replacements.” (p.21)
In his response to Strassers’ paper; Probing Urban Waste: Comments on Susan Strasser’s “Waste and Want,” Gunther Barth considers the roles of concept, urgency, attitudes and artefacts. He also discusses the etymology and definition of junk: “Mathews’ Dictionary of Americanisms, which traced the noun to the Congressional Globe, February 23, 1841, defined junk as “miscellaneous secondhand or discarded articles of little or no value.” (p.23) And also the origin of the French poubelle: Eugene-Rene Poubelle and his 1883 decree. “It required that garbage be put out for collection in galvanized metal containers in the French capital. [..] The new garbage can, derisively called poubelle, has of course immortalized the prefect’s name.” (p.26-27)
Ecologist Wolfgang Erz draws upon Strasser’s paper to discuss wasteland which he defines as, “Land that is not in use for production (even though it may be productive), also called idle land or fallow land—Ödland, or sometimes Unland in German.” (p.29)
His assertion “Wasteland is always a highly valued ecological asset for nature conservation” is that “Wasteland has an ecological and recreational value as open space in urban areas, in addition to its critical value as habitats for a diversity of otherwise disappearing species of animals and plants.” (p.30)
Erz makes four observations of a development of wasteland analogous to waste caused by production and consumption:
(1) Wasteland increases in periods of wealth and affluence and through actions (or non-actions) of prosperous groups in society.
(2) Wasteland is reduced during periods of economic depression.
(3) Attitudes about the meaning of wasteland to society are based “on a distinction between things belonging to no one and things belonging to someone.”
(4) The opinion of wasteland is changing due to different land-use cultures–producer and consumer cultures in a broad sense–in the context of changing social ideas, revealing the conflict of economy versus ecology observed today (in the particular case of wasteland showing a slight trend toward ecology). (p30-31)
