Thinking with waste to know the economic
Josh Lepawsky · Journal of Cultural Economy · 2023
I argue that thinking with `waste' to know the `economic' necessitates making some important conceptual distinctions. Drawing on empirical examples from my research on pollution and waste arising from electronics I first address distinctions between waste, dirt, and discard. Next, I argue that thinking with waste and pollution from electronics justifies a need to carefully distinguish between scale and magnitude. This claim is examined through examples related to chemical pollution arising from manufacturing electronics. I subsequently argue that thinking with waste clarifies the need to think and act in relation to indeterminacy rather than uncertainty. This claim is evidenced through a discussion of the temporal and the spatial magnitudes of waste arising from electronics manufacturing at locations in and beyond Silicon Valley. Finally, I claim that thinking with waste enables broader capacities to think about the ethics of ordering in and of industrial systems. This last claim is examined through a brief discussion of the economies of commercial content moderation on social media platforms. My argument treats wasting as a technique of power that enables social media companies to flourish while wasting the hearts and minds of the people who work to weed out objectionable content for social media users.