Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Much as Porter discovered playthings as a little boy in bottle caps, rather than collecting more and more matchbox cars, for example, remnants of consumerism only to be disposed of in weeks rather than things to be kept as relics of a bygone era, one must begin to see from an early age the slim line of difference between, say a Happy Meal Toy or a bottle cap from one's father's favorite soda.
Thus Scanlan asks, how do we decide what is considered junk in Western society? Simply because the discarded remnants one's immediate life may no longer be of interest to the original user of the commodity does not mean that garbage cannot provide a historian with a potent artifact later on, or even an enterprising art student with raw material to create something of beauty. What would we not give to see the trash of the ancient Egyptians, and is indeed some of the Mesopotamian broken pottery we so carefully assemble in art museums across the world what would be garbage, if it were only a few years old?
The memory of a society is thus always written in a kind of garbage. And, as the adage about trash and treasure cited at the beginning of...
But to attain such insight, Scanlan suggests, modern Western philosophy, science, and technology must cast away its obsession wit cleansing, which only produces overwhelming mountains of waste.
This cleansing obsession creates ultimately unsupportable landfills but also, the author argues, creates a sad and abject culture where our lives themselves become disposable as we become unable of forming real attachments in a lasting fashion to either things or people. At least by creating attachments, however, to the lives of others through refuse, we may escape the immediate past in its totality becoming garbage, a way of recovering lost lives -- the cast of finery in thrift stores, given by the survivors of the dead, or simply finding beauty in a child's toy by the side of the road that one converts into a piece of bedroom furniture for a dormitory.
Works Cited
Porter, Richard C. The Economics of Waste. Washington DC: RFF Press, 2002.
Scanlan, John. On Garbage. Reaktion Books, 2005.
Works Cited
Porter, Richard C. The Economics of Waste. Washington DC: RFF Press, 2002.
Scanlan, John. On Garbage. Reaktion Books, 2005.
The fact that his labors are more often than not, fortified by beer, to steel him to the unpleasant task of destruction, underline Hanta's futile attempts to disengage himself from the physical, material act of cultural destruction through drug-inducted dissociation. (2) Hanta records, particularly during the first part of the book, in excruciating detail the masses and masses of words he has rendered for the scrap heap, and his
The life of the world is an endless cyclical act of discarding and renewal. The philosophical nature of art can show us that to refuse to recycle and to cling to the false idea that the shiny new tin wheels on our roller blades, that originates in the scrap metal of our recent ancestors, is new is a powerful one. Scanlan's poetic musings in On Garbage also stress the humbling
Sociology of Waste Putting waste to use: sociological explanations behind specific beliefs in waste management Looking at the trash located in a dormitory, one of the items that caught my interest was a sheaf of papers containing readings, exams, and notes from a (notably) university student. Since some of the readings were somehow familiar or of interest to me, I salvaged these papers from the trash, and tried to know what is
Fundamental Principles of Solid Waste ManagementWaste management is the process of handling, storing, and disposing of solid waste. Solid waste includes both organic and inorganic materials, such as food scraps, paper products, glass, metal, and plastics. Waste management is important for public health and the environment. Improperly managed waste can contaminate water supplies, spread disease, and damage ecosystems.There are three main types of waste: municipal solid waste (MSW), industrial waste,
Pacific Garbage patch, as it's often referred to, exists between the U.S. mainland and Hawaii. Many estimates put its size at over two times larger than the state of Texas (Zhang, Zhang, Feng, and Yang, 2010). Much of this waste is composed of plastic, styrofoam, and other materials containing harmful ingredients that do not break down very quickly. In fact, much of this material ends up in the food
Dream City Oriented The apparent garbage crisis of overflowing landfills would help develop urban landscapes for the future city. Establish an overlay district of employment to encourage high-income employment in strategic locations I would like to see the city where health systems are integrated and sharing one regional headquarter. The leaders must facilitate development programs that generate high-income jobs. I must address my quest for an economically vital and people-friendly future city. The apparent garbage