Is there room for a circular economy “from below”? Reflections on privatisation and commoning of circular waste loops in Argentina

Carenzo, Sebastián; Juarez, Paula; Becerra, Lucas

doi:10.1080/13549839.2022.2048258

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Sites of waste disposal are key for waste pickers to ensure access to materials and this population has long derived its livelihood from dumps and landfills. Waste studies scholars have documented the targeting of these sites for "accumulation by dispossession" [38][39][40][41]. Landfill closures in the Global South have documented emblematic cases of enclosures and dispossession [12,42,43], further dispossessing waste pickers from their capital, namely waste [44] and livelihoods [42,43].…”

Section: Methods: Qualitative Community-based Research Methodology Wi...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Waste Pickers’ Formalisation from Bogotá to Cartagena de Indias: Dispossession and Socio-Economic Enclosures in Two Colombian Cities

Neville

Cortès

2023

Sustainability

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Colombia is considered a pioneer in inclusive recycling in Latin America and the state-led formalisation policies are considered a referent for the socio-economic inclusion of waste pickers beyond the region. Nevertheless, more than 60,000 waste pickers in Colombia are struggling to remain in place despite these inclusive recycling and formalisation policies. This paper examines the implementation of formalisation policies and their consequences for the population of waste pickers by comparing evidence from two Colombian cities: Bogotá and Cartagena de Indias. The paper draws on extensive qualitative community-based research methodology with waste pickers in both cities guided by an interdisciplinary epistemological position to support Colombian waste pickers’ political struggle for recognition from a theoretical reflection. This paper shows how formalisation policies became a mechanism of manifold dispossessions in both cities. This paper categorises three forms of enclosures faced by waste pickers: (a) material and socio-economic; (b) bodily and spatial; and (c) political and organisational. Finally, this paper concludes by urging to consider the situated social, political, and cultural facets of waste pickers’ labour to enhance grassroots reflections on how to achieve greater levels of social justice and inclusion.

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Section: Methods: Qualitative Community-based Research Methodology Wi...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Waste Pickers’ Formalisation from Bogotá to Cartagena de Indias: Dispossession and Socio-Economic Enclosures in Two Colombian Cities

Neville

Cortès

2023

Sustainability

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“…Mainstream versions of CE originate in waste and resource management [61] and are translated into a sustainability program oriented by the logics of market and business organizations [30,62]. But there is space for reclaiming the concept [22,23,63] from alternative logics.…”

Section: Circular Economy In Practice and Institutional Changementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In response, the articulation of alternatives within CE discourse is addressed in previous literature (e.g., [6, 9, 18-20, 22, 37, 60, 63-65]). These include contentions about the narratives and worldviews that a CE serves [6,37], the need to resist techno-fixations [9,64], and the incorporation of bottom-up approaches [22,23,63,65]. Holmes et al [20, p.71] argued that for a consumer discourse on CE to be successful, it must recognize "labour and skills involved-labour which often blurs the boundaries of production and consumption."…”

Section: Circular Economy In Practice and Institutional Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Contesting Consumerism with a Circular Economy?

2022

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The circular economy (CE) concept has recently entered the public discourse. A CE should contest the reproduction of a so-called linear economy. However, it is largely promoted as a normative top-down fix for business models and waste management. A branch of CE research calls for critical revisions of the concept to support the integration of social aspects. A related shortcoming is the lack of definition of the change that CE can bring about. Two research questions guide the work presented in this article: (1) What should be included in a socio-cultural and institutional framing to study CE? (2) What could leverage an alternative CE? We address the first question by proposing practice-driven institutionalism as a relevant perspective, focusing on studying consumption practices — practical engagements and alternative logics. We further apply a practice-driven institutional framework to an empirical study of cases from sources in a city in Norway, where consumption and production practices are highly embedded in consumerism. For the second question, we describe consumerism and its institutional dimension as the backdrop against which practical engagements are negotiated. Finally, we identify aspects of alternative logics bundled with these practical engagements. In conclusion, the article proposes a practice-driven institutional approach to socio-culturally frame CE and to identify grammars of practice that can leverage change that does not rehearse consumerism. In the specific case of our study, we highlight contextualizing use-value through social relations as a critical part of an alternative CE.

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“…Diverse processes of value-adding by waste pickers precede the recirculation of materials in the economy, enabled by their detailed knowledge of materials, markets, collection routes and waste generators, thus preventing flows of recyclable materials ending up in landfills. The Colombian recyclers' movement takes pride in their role as environmental pioneers, yet despite the Colombian government's political commitment to move towards a circular economy and the ethical promise to place recicladores at the centre of these new public policies, similar to other Latin American contexts, waste pickers' grassroots knowledge of circularity (Gutberlet and Carenzo 2020;Carenzo et al 2022) is not acknowledged and historical processes of dispossession are extended (O'Hare 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In the shadow of the circular economy

Neville

2024

Circular Economies in an Unequal World

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Is there room for a circular economy “from below”? Reflections on privatisation and commoning of circular waste loops in Argentina

Cited by 11 publications

References 49 publications

Waste Pickers’ Formalisation from Bogotá to Cartagena de Indias: Dispossession and Socio-Economic Enclosures in Two Colombian Cities

Waste Pickers’ Formalisation from Bogotá to Cartagena de Indias: Dispossession and Socio-Economic Enclosures in Two Colombian Cities

Contesting Consumerism with a Circular Economy?

In the shadow of the circular economy

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