HomeFixing the world

Fixing the world

Réparer le monde

Excess, leftover and innovation

Excès, reste et innovation

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Published on Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Abstract

In the context of an exhibition 'Ordures!', planned for 2017, and a special issue of the journal Techniques & culture to be published in partnership with the MuCEM, this workshop aims to explore, extend, and question the notion itself of 'remainder' as well as the relationship between remainder and waste in the broadest sense, including as it relates to globalized flows of (over)consumption. At a time when certain social science researchers are re-exploring the notion of Anthropocene, what heuristic challenges do these categories of remainders pose?

 

Announcement

Argument

Remainders and the way they are dealt with are a productive social sciences heuristic. Or so we wish to argue. Incorporating the subject of waste but seeking to cast a much wider net, this workshop brings together researchers from multiple disciplines, working in a variety of distant and 'nearby' fieldsites, around the topic of 'remainders,' conceived of not only as 'obverse of production' but also in their crucial practical and symbolic dimensions.

Analyzing remainder(s) provides insight into a series of profoundly interwoven social, environmental, and political issues.

In the context of an exhibition 'Ordures!', planned for 2017, and a special issue of the journal Techniques & culture to be published in partnership with the MuCEM, this workshop aims to explore, extend, and question the notion itself of 'remainder' as well as the relationship between remainder and waste in the broadest sense, including as it relates to globalized flows of (over)consumption.

At a time when certain social science researchers are re-exploring the notion of Anthropocene, what heuristic challenges do these categories of remainders pose?

What are the consequences of dealing with objects in a way that does not contemplate exchange, circulation, or return? Conversely, to what extent do circulatory economies reincorporate remainders in unexpected ways? Does the study of remainders, or what Georges Bataille called the 'accursed share,' allow, as he promised, for turning our way of thinking 'upside down' by broadening our current 'restricted economy' to a 'general economy'?

Remainders cannot be conceived of as ontologically given, but must rather be thought of as belonging to a category the contours of which expand, contract, and deconstruct themselves depending on the value regimes, techniques, and beliefs of each society, as well as through activities such as elimination, collection, repair, transformation, re-valuation, preservation. Similarly, the notion of remainder has different material and immaterial meanings: should hunter-gatherer or horticultural societies be regarded as being 'remainderless' (or at least without waste?). Or do remainders, cinders, excreta take other (immaterial?) forms in a humid tropical environment characterized by the biodegradability of plant matter, a context that is clearly very different from one dominated by metal or plastic artefacts of industrial societies.

Apart from the material forms of remainders, the processes or transformations by which they change status are of particular importance for the collective reflection we seek to develop through this special issue. We are particularly keen on studies that reveal forms of innovation, knowledge, savoir-faire, bricolage, and ways-of-being that the accelerated world of consumption and overproduction produces as rebound and resistance effects, in particular against planned obsolescence.

Program

THURSDAY, 20 NOVEMBER 2014

9.15 Arrival and distribution of visitor ID badges, over coffee

9.45 Word of welcome from Denis Chevallier (MuCEM) and Suzanne de Cheveigné (Centre Norbert Elias - CNE)

10.00 Introduction to "Fixing the World" by Frédéric Joulian (CNE), Jamie Furniss (University of Edinburgh), Yann-Philippe Tastevin (CNE-MuCEM)

20 min Presentation / 10 min Discussion

  • 10h30-11h00 Being at rest: nuclear and neutral, Yoann Moreau, Anthropologue, EHESS - Centre Edgar Morin, France
  • 11h00 -11h30 Beyond trauma: exhibition of the Tohoku earthquake and preservation of the buildings destroyed by the tsunami, Shoichiro Takezawa, anthropologue, National Museum of ethnology (Minpaku), Osaka-Japon
  • 11h30-12h00 “JAPANESE NUCLEAR WASTE AVATARS”, Peter Kirby, Environmental Anthropologist, University of Oxford / School of Geography and Environment, United -Kingdom

12h00 - 12h15 BREAK

  • 12h15-12h45 “DECONSTRUCTING DEMOLITION: JOURNEY THROUGH SCRAP AND SALVAGE”, Hilary Powell, Artist, United -Kingdom

Discussant’s Comments(5 minutes)

LUNCH

  • 14h00-14h30 “DIS-ARTICULATED BONES”, John Harries and Joost Fontein, Social Anthropologists, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
  • 14h30-15h00 From "atomic waste" to "child": the status of dead fetuses in France, Anne-Sophie Giraud, doctorante en Anthropologie, Centre Norbert Elias, France 

15h00 - 15h15 BREAK 

  • 15h15-15h45 The soiled old woman and her leavings, an "'other"'-figure between resistance and sacred, Caroline Darroux, Anthropologue, IDEMEC, France 
  • 15h45-16h15 Blast furnace, 20th Century, Jean-Louis Tornatore, Anthroplogue, Université de Bourgogne, Centre Georges Chevrier, France

Discussant’s Comments (5 minutes) 

FRIDAY, 21 NOVEMBER 2014

9h00 Coffee 

  • 9h15 – 9h45 “NON-WASTE IN A NON-WESTERN SOCIETY: THE AARI OF SOUTHWESTERN ETHIOPIA”, Morie Kaneko, Anthropologist, University of Kyoto, Japan 
  • 9h45- 10h15 Remnants of power: subjugating and subjectifying (one's self) through waste in Cameroun (Garoua and Maroua), Emilie Guitard, Anthropologue, Laboratoire Ethnologie et Sociologie Comparative, Université Paris-Ouest La Défense, France 

10h15 – 10h30 BREAK

  • 10h30-11h00 “CYCLES OF WASTE AND VALUE: THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN E-WASTE SYSTEM”, Yaakov Garb and John-Michael Davis, Geographers, Ben Gourion University of Negev, Israel and Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada 
  • 11h00 – 11h30 High-tech, deferred: the transformation and resale of used electronic devices in southern China, Yvan Schulz, ddoctorant en Anthropologie à l'Institut d'ethnographie de l'Université de Neuchâtel, Suisse
  • 12h00 - 12h30 “MATERIAL MATTERS: THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF INDUSTRY'S REMAINS IN THE REINVENTION IN GERMANY'S RUHR”, Cynthia Browne, Anthropologist, Harvard University, USA

Discussant’s Comments (5 minutes)

LUNCH 

  • 13h30 – 14h00 What remains to be done? Anthropocene: open wastes and closed wastes, Victor Petit, Historien, et Bertrand Guillaume, Pphilosophe de l'environnement, Université de technologie de Troyes, France 
  • 14h00 - 14h30 In the footsteps of the plastic oceans: world-making with the irreparable, Baptiste Monsaingeon, Sociologue, Université Paris 1, France 
  • 14h30 – 15h00 “THE ORBITAL WAKE OF THE ANTHROPOCENE”, Josh Lepawsky, Geographer, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada 

15H00 – 15H15 BREAK 

  • 15h15 - 15h45 “CAR SACRIFICES: EXCESS AND CONSUMPTION IN CONTEMPORARY SAUDI ARABIA”, Pascal Menoret, Historian, New York University, Abu Dhabi 

Discussant’s Comments (5 minutes) 

15h45 - 16h30  GROUP DISCUSSION chaired by Pierre-Olivier Dittmar (EHESS) and Jamie Furniss (University of Edinburgh)

Places

  • SALLE DUPLEX, MuCEM - I2MP, Fort Saint-Jean - 7 Promenade Robert Laffont
    Marseille, France (13002)

Date(s)

  • Thursday, November 20, 2014
  • Friday, November 21, 2014

Keywords

  • restes, construction, deconstruction, ordures, déchet, seisme, nucléaire

Contact(s)

  • Cécile Lebreton
    courriel : cecile [dot] lebreton [at] mucem [dot] org

Information source

  • Carole LE CLOIEREC
    courriel : carole [dot] le-cloierec [at] univ-amu [dot] fr

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« Fixing the world », Conference, symposium, Calenda, Published on Tuesday, October 28, 2014, https://doi.org/10.58079/r5c

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