Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This study excavates a century's worth of the history of household waste in South Africa, from 1890-1996.It shows that waste history is entangled with histories of disease and poor sanitation, advances in technology, the impact of war, environmental concerns and -perhaps above all -shifting socio-economic circumstances.Using a socio-environmental analytical framework, this analysis of waste history unearths empirical archival data and oral testimony, to contextualise themes of gender, race, class and nationalism in order to place rubbish within the wider historical debates in South Africa.This study uses Rubbish Theory and Broken Windows Theory as well as concepts of "Othering" and the "Sanitation Syndrome" to explore the role of waste in the construction of racial identities and perceptions.This thesis shows that Apartheid should not be seen as a watershed within this waste history, but rather as a continuation of colonial ideas of cleanliness that helped to perpetuate racist stereotypes.This study argues that the lack of waste services in "locations" during this time helped to contribute to the perception of the urban African as the unsanitary Other.The state and civic societies fostered gender roles, which (coupled with wartime nationalist propaganda) helped in shaping waste behaviour promoted by the National Anti-Waste Organisation (NAWO) during the Second World War (WWII).In the years after WWII, the threats of wartime shortages and enthusiastic solutions suggested to municipalities to "end the waste problem" were thwarted by the spread of the landfill as an even more convenient disposal method.The implementation of Apartheid, especially the Group Areas Act (No 41 of 1950) and the rise of consumer society, led to increasingly divergent experiences of waste for urban Africans and whites.The thesis uses a case study of the Devon Valley Landfill community outside of Stellenbosch.This ethnographic history explores notions of the "Subaltern" in order to give this history a human face.The diachronic analysis of this community offers a lens into ideas of "ordentlikheid" (decency), "weggooi mense" (throwaway people) and how these waste-pickers experience the environment in which they live.
Author: Giorgina F. J. King
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2132254875