Transcript
DIGITAL DEBRIS' PRESENTATION Hello,2)) My name is Blanca and I'm developing a post-doctoral research project titled “Scrapping politics: innovation and citizen expertise on reducing, reusing and recycling e-waste” at theLancaster University. The objective of this work is to analyse how innovative and creative informalpractices carried out by citizens and informal groups facing e-waste may become potential expertprocesses to (re)define and democratize technological knowledge production and public politicsaround e-waste. To achieve this, I have undertaken a multi-sited ethnography in Spain with 4different experiences:a group of informal waste pickers that collects scrap and other waste fromthe streets in order to sell it as metal chunks or to refurbish and send it to second-hand markets in Africa; an online swapping list; a hacking and makers project (Obsoletos) that made some courseson repairing and refurbishing computers but also hacks obsolete devices to transform them intodifferent ones and, finally, a learning repair workshop (Cyclicka) that informally teaches the job of repairing donated computers.3)) As a first outcome from an review and analysis of empirical materials collected along severalmonths (news, documents, reports, papers, etc...,) I made a cartography of this socio-technical controversy in the shape of a timeline that simulated a computer's lifespan. This timeline shows themain agents, their relationships and discursive and practical positions around the problem of e-waste. This information let us define which are the main environmental, social, economic or technological conflicts about e-waste and also, symmetrically, the citizens' and informal proposalsthat try to respond and intervene on them. Focusing in the spanish context, I selected 4 of theseinitiatives considering their heterogeneity and relevance.4)) After analysing the juridic and legal measures that regulate the e-waste's treatment, I've definedthe features of the “waste regime” that mediates between the Spanish society and their electronicwaste. We can say that we live in a moment of transition between a still lively “Metal Regime”(before the European Directive was dictated) and an emerging “E-waste Regime” (e- because of electronic but also ecological).5)) Formally, we have passed from a linear system to a circular one that, however in practice, isstill 'finalist' as recycling is much more promoted than any other intermediate solution such asreusing or repairing. In responsible and economic terms, no waste is produced for manufacturers'purses and, as a consequence, design, production and consumption keep being taboo. As adifference, as the managerial process of e-waste treatment has been privatized and displacedtowards producers, there is a change of roles: the only legitimated agents to act are producers andrecycling industry and now, the maximum that authorities can do is just to legislate waste once ithas been already produced. This particular distribution of rights and duties leave aside citizens,who pay for maintaining the system but only have access to a very narrow moment of the process:disposal.In technological terms, there has been also a change: wether for the “Metal Regime” the electronicwaste didn't even exist as a specific category or material, with its own needs and environmentaleffects (as discarded computers were treated as scrap, inert and inactive matter or harmless objectwithout need of regulation); for the leaking and faulty “E-waste Regime”, computers are almostorganic, active and potentially dangerous elements, a particular matter that requires specialtreatments and juridic regulations. Despite all these legal novelties, the time inside our actualRegime is still a permanent “techno-present” where automaticity, power and lightness of newmodels, the invisible tax of consumers, the offshoring factories, the 'out of sight' treatment placesand the faulty legal infrastructures, make us believe in a de-materialized technology withoutconsequences.6)) Nevertheless, against this kind of 'naturalized' progress and 'de-materialized' narratives of effectiveness and innovation, we find that the citizen practices that we observe, and specially theone about the informal waste-pickers, re-materialize technology and map the political relations and conditions that made it possible. By constantly re-imagining e-waste, waste-pickers, menders andhackers re-create new forms of value and informal innovation through activities like collection,recovering, mending, hacking, dismantling, scrapping or re-assembling of new-old computers thatwill be back to second hand markets.Their innovative character lies in the fact that they defy e-waste's destiny and ontology: in their hands, a waste-computer is not a singular object defined byits disposal and treatment after manufacture and consumption, but a precarious and temporal knotof heterogeneous assemblages in transition. The key point here is the (possibility of) transition. Acomputer in the bin, like the boats Gregson et al. (2010) describe, is not valued “for what it is, butfor what it 'might become'” (Ib. 2010:853). Informal waste pickers do not work with certainty and'actuality', but with pure 'virtuality' and possibilities of ‘becoming’ which transform brokenness,failures or legal restrictions into productive occasions. When an old computer is considered wasteand then dismantled and reassembled, it is being transformed from a static metal 'black box' intoan open modular and mendable object. All the practices and involved agents of this controversy, no matter if they are formal or informal,legal or illegal, institutional or citizen, compete for defining and establishing different ontologies tothe computer/waste. The same object, a computer, in a same space and time, is inscribed in (or by) different regimes: the logic of the matter coexists with the logic of the function; and its value isdetermined, alternatively, by the weight-kilograms or by the processing capacity-bytes. Thisquestions the supposed stability, unity, atemporality and certainty of computers, usually consideredas clearly defined entities and delimited objects, ready to consume. On the other hand, it shows itsprecarious, multiple, heterogeneous and temporal ontology. However, what could be read as aweakness is only a necessary condition for a greater material perdurability or for becoming adifferent object after being labeled as waste. In vulnerability, multiplicity and ontologicalprecariousness lies the possibility of transforming and (re)creating objects and values. 50)) New paths of work Considering our present results, from now on I propose to go in depth into 3 working lines. Morespecifically, I propose:1) In the area of epistemology:... to analyse the epistemic practices and conditions that sustainthese initiatives. To analyse the mechanisms and ways of knowledge production that give themcontinuity and connect with other publics in order to make of them some experting process withcapacity to respond the actual legal and political system around e-waste. Considering that theinstitutional stage seems to keep technocratic logics where the techno-scientific expertise works asa “closure” of political and ecological conflicts, taking priority over other different criteria, we findrelevant to explore how these other epistemic practices create and transmit knowledges,competences and skills to broaden the citizens political agency. And maybe, as a consequence, itmight influence on a more open and responsible techno-science. If our actual system of wasteevaluation and treatment leaves aside the citizenship and limits them to mere consumers andfunders of the circuit, then, we need to identify which are the epistemic conditions, -limits andpossibilities- that let them invert such roles. Which are the epistemic conditions and acts toreconnect people with their own effects of consumption and also to redistribute agencies andcollective responsibilities about e-waste on a more plural way.2) In the area of politics:...I propose to review my own perspective and to analyse critically thenotions of “citizenship”, technological “innovation” or “progress”, in order to examine their limits andto account for the social exclusion and damages produced by technological development in our contemporary societies. This would let us comprehend the political effects over some kind of bodies and lives that, despite occupying informal, illegal or non-recognized spaces, (or because of it), they are forcedly involved in the work of invisible maintenance and support of the actual systemof waste treatment. Although, a preliminary analysis of this controversy revealed the environmentaland sanitary threatens of some illegal practices, (such as the inappropriate treatment of waste or the exportation to other countries); in a second moment, there appear other political damages thatare exercised over vulnerable bodies and lives: those belonging to illegal migrants or poor localpeople under risk of exclusion. By collecting, reusing, repairing or recycling some waste materialsthat are found in the streets and don't arrive to the institutional chain of selective disposal, these people carry on some essential caring tasks for the efficacy of the system. Nevertheless, they areignored, spurned or even persecuted and criminalized. The analytical tools offered by Ethics andPolitical Philosophy, like eco-feminism or post-colonial studies of technoscience, could be veryuseful to visualize and understand the chained connections between a) these informal caringpractices, -b) their vulnerable bodies and agents and c) the notion of (non)citizenship. As well asthe effects of exclusion, unsustainability and damage that technological progress and innovationmake over some lives and environments. But we might also appreciate the strategies andeveryday acts of resistance and subversion that these people display in order to revert theseeffects, survive and try to make of themselves some recognized subjects with rights.3) In the specific area of Ethics:... and very closely related to the previous point, I think it isnecessary to explore the possible features of an “Ethics of/from waste”: a situated and non-anthropocentric Ethics of repair and care (for matter) that, departing from the informal practices of recovering, repair, reuse, hack or recycling, let us establish more sustainable relationships withenvironments and resources, and also fairer ecological and economic models. If we apply afeminist philosophical sight to the problem of e-waste, we'll see that the precariousness,multiplicity, indeterminacy, vulnerability and finiteness that we described for computers, are alsoontological conditions for every body or material entity. Feminist scholars and activists exploringand reclaiming the feminized caring invisible work, have shown our mutual inter-dependence andthe fragility and vulnerability of all existence. They also give corporeal density to the fiction of anautonomous and free individual that serves as a base for displaying neoliberal logics of governance. Behind this fiction of identity, but also behind the promises of progress, innovation,freedom and autonomy narrated by technology, we find ambivalent relations of inter-dependence,diverse material links and some inevitable but necessary engagements of co-responsability. Fromthis line of work, I propose to interpret these collecting, mending, reusing, hacking or taking apartactions as practices of care (for matter) and to frame them inside of what is named as “mendingcultures”. In a very inductive and empirical way, once I could define their ethical traces andfeatures, I would like to propose a possible “Ethics of/from waste”: some ways of relating with(material and environmental) “others” that host precariousness, vulnerability and failure as anontology but also as a political place, as a condition of possibility and opportunity to strength andsupport ourselves, mutually. This particular Ethics of care and repair would try to respond to thestructural inequality that technological development brings with it, through a call for collectiveresponsibility with and through e-waste. It is about thinking what “living well” today means in ahighly technified but finite and limited common world.'Régimen de Basura' (Gille, 2010)tabúes (Lepawski, 2012).infraestructuras legales fallidas (Queiruga et al. 2012)tecnología desmaterializada y sin consecuencias (Gabrys, 2011:57).ponen en entredicho y complejizan los ciclos económicos y las trayectorias geográficas (Lepawski,2012; Lepawski & Mcnabb, 2010; Lepawski & Mather, 2011; Moore, 2012)“caja negra” (Latour, 1992)ntología precaria, múltiple, heterogénea y temporal (De Laet & Mol, 2000; Mol, 2002; Beisel &Schneider, 2012)( open science ) (Epstein, 1995; Callon et al. 2001; Callon y Rabeharisoa, 2003, 2008; Rabeharisoa,2006)ética y la filosofía política (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2010, 2011, 2012; Butler, 2001, 2006, 2009, 2010;Fraser, 2005, 2009)eco-feminismo o los estudios post-coloniales de la tecnociencia (Haraway, 1989, 1991, 2004; Anderson, 2009; de Sousa, 2010; Harding, 2009; Mcneil, 2006; Seth, 2009; Philip, 2010; Dillon, 2013)la ética del cuidado y el trabajo feminizado (Tronto, 1993; Precarias a la Deriva, 2004; López-Gil,2013),prácticas de cuidado (material) (Graham & Thrift, 2007; Gregson, Metcalfe y Crewe, 2009; Henke,1999; Denis y Pontille, 2011)“culturas de la reparación” (Middleton, 2013; Jackson, 2013) 3. Objetivos I) Analizar las condiciones y prácticas epistémicas, las formas creativas de producción deconocimiento, que hacen de las iniciativas ciudadanas estudiadas procesos de expertizacióncon capacidad para responder y mejorar colectivamente el actual sistema de residuoselectrónicos.II) Analizar de forma crítica las dinámicas de exclusión social y los efectos de daño material ysocio-ambiental que subyacen al “desarrollo” e “innovación” de la industria electrónica, así como las estrategias de resistencia y gestos subversivos que tratan de responderle desde lasiniciativas estudiadas.III) Definir una posible “ética de/desde la basura” (electrónica): una ética situada que, desde lasprácticas de la reparación y el cuidado (material) observadas, asume la vulnerabilidad yprecariedad ontológicas para tratar de establecer ecologías/economías más sostenibles desdeun mundo material común finito y limitado.
