"Keep Cyprus Clean": Littering, Pollution, and Otherness

Argyrou, Vassos

doi:10.1525/can.1997.12.2.159

Cited by 18 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 10 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Douglas does however continue to be considered seminal within anthropological studies of waste, although there is a tension in her work's reception over whether it stands for a universalist or a particularist definition of waste. For some authors, Douglas appears to stand for the category's relativity (Argyrou : 162; McKee : 733; Winegar : 609, 620). However, when Fredericks argues that ‘the meaning and thus political import of waste is not a transhistorical, cultural, or geographical given, but, rather, matters differently in specific conjunctures and their attendant sociotechnical complexes’, she considers this a point of disagreement with Douglas (Fredericks : 533).…”

Section: Beyond Moop: Toward An Ethnographic Rather Than Analytic Undmentioning

confidence: 99%

What type of problem is waste in Egypt?

Furniss

2017

Soc Anthropol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper attempts to show that while the production of waste may be universal, the threat it poses is not. In order to explain and justify the question ‘what type of problem is waste’, the paper begins by attempting to, first, provincialise the ‘environmental’ framing of waste by examining the category's historically changing problematisations in Western Europe and North America, and, second, through a critique of Mary Douglas's work Purity and danger, to argue that waste should be theorised ethnographically rather than analytically. It then argues that, in Egypt, the materiality of litter and the sociality of waste work are sublimated into a religio‐civilisational register based on the central trope of cleanliness rather than environment. It does so by considering various meanings and inflexions of the word ‘cleanliness’ in vernacular usage, the way the terms environment and pollution are used, naming conventions for waste collectors and anti‐litter campaigns.

show abstract

Section: Beyond Moop: Toward An Ethnographic Rather Than Analytic Undmentioning

confidence: 99%

What type of problem is waste in Egypt?

Furniss

2017

Soc Anthropol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As such, MSW infrastructure can further shape personal identity and social judgment. Japanese citizens may proudly display their recyclables for neighbors to admire (Hawkins 2006: 107-110), while Cypriots and Chinese migrants are both judged as culturally repugnant for littering public space with what should have been left for waste workers to collect (Argyrou 1997;Dürr 2010).…”

Section: Streams: Waste Materialities and Their Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Waste and Waste Management

Reno

2015

Annu. Rev. Anthropol.

162

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Discard studies have demonstrated that waste is more than just a symptom of an all-too-human demand for meaning or a merely technical problem for sanitary engineers and public health officials. The afterlife of waste materials and processes of waste management reveal the centrality of transient and discarded things for questions of materiality and ontology and marginal and polluting labor and environmental justice movements, as well as for critiques of the exploitation and deferred promises of modernity and imperial formations. There is yet more waste will tell us, especially as more studies continue to document the many ways that our wastes are not only our problem, but become entangled with the lives of nonhuman creatures and the future of the planet we share.

show abstract

“…Theodossopoulos : 30). The top‐down ‘colonial’ imposition of new ideals concerning the landscape negates the views of locals whose relation to the land is one of economic necessity, of urgency and struggle at the ‘most basic level of existence’ (Argyrou : 160).…”

Section: Under the Wings Of Daedalus: The Photovoltaic (Solar) Programmementioning

confidence: 99%

“…These tensions arise from the fact that environmentalism is seen to be pursued by predominantly middle‐class urbanities in their mid‐twenties who are unfamiliar with rural life and dismissive of indigenous relationships with the land (Theodossopoulos : 4–5). In Cyprus, Vassos Argyrou () shows how environmental concerns are usually the domain of the local middle classes, with environmentalism being associated with civilization and Europeanism, whilst brazen anti‐environmentalism is hailed as a form of resistance against hegemonic foreign powers. However, both Theodossopoulos and Argyrou allow space for nuances in these dichotomies.…”

Section: Aeolus’ Bag or The Tragedy Of The Common Windmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sun, wind, and the rebirth of extractive economies: renewable energy investment and metanarratives of crisis in Greece

Argenti

Knight

2015

Royal Anthropological Inst

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the midst of economic crisis, the Greek state has taken the unprecedented step of opening many of the nation's closed business sectors to international investors. Opportunities for multinational investment have been most prolific in the arena of renewable energy, where foreign prospecting in solar and wind energy is soaring. This article discusses two renewable energy initiatives: photovoltaic parks on agricultural land in Thessaly, central mainland Greece, and a planned wind farm development on the Aegean island of Chios. Among the people of Thessaly and Chios, the renewable energy initiatives are widely seen in terms of conquest and occupation akin to the Ottoman era and the Second World War. Harnessing natural resources is perceived to be a colonial programme of economic extraction associated with the global South as much as a sustainable energy initiative, heralding a return to a time of foreign occupation. This article examines the dialectical relationship emerging between narratives of renewable energy extraction and broader, long-standing conceptions of Greek identity.

show abstract

"Keep Cyprus Clean": Littering, Pollution, and Otherness

Cited by 18 publications

References 10 publications

What type of problem is waste in Egypt?

What type of problem is waste in Egypt?

Waste and Waste Management

Sun, wind, and the rebirth of extractive economies: renewable energy investment and metanarratives of crisis in Greece

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About