Join Cindy for the fourth installment of “Economies of Discard” as she chats with Dr. Waqas Butt, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Waqas’ research interests include caste, work and labor, waste, infrastructures, development, and value. Cindy and Waqas discuss his work in Lahore and the Punjab where he explores themes related to property and resources in waste infrastructures. Waqas is the author of “Waste intimacies: Caste and the unevenness of life in urban Pakistan” which appeared recently in American Ethnologist. He is currently working on a book project that explores the ways in which waste workers, who predominantly represent low or non-caste groups, have become essential components of urban life and waste infrastructures.
To read more about Dr. Waqas Butt and his work, please visit his faculty page: https://www.anthropology.utoronto.ca/people/directories/all-faculty/waqas-butt
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Join Cindy for the third episode in this Spring’s collection, Economies of Waste and Discard. In this Episode Cindy is joined by Dr. Elana Resnick. Elana’s fieldwork among a group of Romani street sweepers in Sofia Bulgaria gave her first hand insight into the racialization of waste labor, as well as how this work has been affected by the post-socialist transition and EU accession. Elana Resnick is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California Santa Barbara.