2018 Society for the Anthropology of Work Book Prize Finalist
A01=Kathleen M. Millar
AES Book Awards
Author_Kathleen M. Millar
Category=JBSD
Category=JHMC
Category=NHK
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LASA Book Awards
Sergio Buarque de Holanda Prize Best Book in Social Sciences Honorable Mention
Sharon Stephens Prize Honorable Mention
Society for Latin American And Caribbean Anthropology SLACA Best Book Award Winner
Product details
- ISBN 9780822370505
- Weight: 363g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 13 Feb 2018
- Publisher: Duke University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
Kathleen M. Millar is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Simon Fraser University.
