Vortrag im Oberseminar

Prof. Jutta Gutberlet (Department of Geography, University of Victoria, Canada)

"Grassroots social innovations changing narratives on waste: Research with waste picker cooperatives and associations in Brazil"

In cities around the globe, millions of informal waste pickers collect household waste and recyclables daily to earn a living. In doing so, they make a significant contribution to reducing the carbon footprint, recovering resources, improving environmental conditions and health, particularly of low-income residents, creating jobs and income among the poor in the urban agglomerations of the global South. These individuals and groups often generate important grassroots innovations that increase urban resilience and sustainability. Yet, their efforts are hardly recognized as such, nor are the everyday services they provide, remunerated. Waste pickers and waste workers, worldwide, are among the most excluded, most impoverished and unheard populations. This presentation will focus on recent community based research conducted under the Recycling Networks and Waste Governance project, in collaboration with scholars and practitioners from different regions (Kenya, Tanzania, Nicaragua, Argentina and Brazil). Our research takes a comparative, interdisciplinary, multi-scalar and yet place based, community oriented approach. I will present results from qualitative fieldwork conducted in 2017 with 21 recycling cooperatives and 7 recycling networks in the metropolitan region of São Paulo, Brazil on social innovations that improve recycling and household waste management. Some of the challenges these grassroots initiatives encounter and some of their solutions will be discussed with insights from these waste picker organizations in the contexts of their local livelihood situations. The research aims to advance the situated urban political ecology theory, concerned with everyday praxis of waste actors through knowledge democratization and knowledge coproduction. Finally, the research contributes to exploring challenges associated with the integration of resilience and sustainability in the city.

Wann?     Montag, 02.07.2018, 18 Uhr
Wo?         Institut für Ethnologie, Oettingenstraße 67, 80538 München
                Raum L155 (Obergeschoss) Lageplan

Für die Veranstaltungsreihe hat Frau Prof. Dr. Eveline Dürr in diesem Semester ein vielseitiges  Programm mit interessanten Themen und ReferentInnen zusammengestellt. Mehr Informationen über ehemalige Vorträge am Institut für Ethnologie finden Sie im „Veranstaltungsarchiv".