Binding: Paperback
Description: Explores the concept of waste from fresh historical cultural and geographical perspectives. Garbage is often assumed to be an inevitable part and problem of human existence. But when did people actually come to think of things as trash as becoming worthless over time or through use as having an end? Unmaking Waste tackles these questions through a long - term cross - cultural approach. Drawing on archaeological finds historical documents and ethnographic observations to examine Europe the United States and Central America from prehistory to the present Sarah Newman traces how different ideas about waste took shape in different times and places. Newman examines what people consider to be waste and how they interact with it as well as what happens when different perceptions of trash come into conflict. Conceptions of waste have shaped forms of reuse and renewal in ancient Mesoamerica early modern ideas of civility and forced religious conversion in New Spain and even the modern discipline of archaeology. Newman argues that centuries of assumptions imposed on other places times and peoples need to be rethought. This book is not only a broad reconsideration of waste; it is also a call for new forms of archaeology that do not take garbage for granted. Unmaking Waste reveals that waste is not and never has been an obvious or universal concept.
Title: Unmaking Waste New Histories Of Old Things
Author(s): Newman Sarah
Publisher: The University Of Chicago Press
Barcode: 9780226826394
Pages: 224 Pages, 30 Color Plates, 18 Halftones, 1 Line Drawings
Publication Date: 5/26/2023
Category: Social & Cultural Anthropology, Ethnography