Speaker: Aparna Agarwal (University of Lausanne)
Landfills in Delhi are often in the public eye, either because of raging fires, oozing leachate in the ground water or their mismanagement in terms of increasing heights, landslides of waste mounds, followed by subsequent mishaps and accidents. These landfills are often seen as sight of ‘disgust’, dangerous discards, and are today at the centre of policy and public deliberation. Representing sites and the epitome of unchecked production and consumerism, landfills today have become living and animated monuments of the Anthropocene. Despite this increasing visibility of landfills in Delhi, precious little is known about the lives of waste pickers and other residents involved in ancillary activities and making a living. In this article I examine how the most marginalised individuals from various lower-caste communities are relegated to the city's periphery and experience their immediate ‘toxic’ environment, and simultaneously, revalue the discarded sites and materials through their labour by recreating liveable spaces and forging distinct forms of balances and dependences around the landfill sites.
Aparna Agarwal is Swiss Government Excellence Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Lausanne. She is also an Assistant Professor (on sabbatical) at the School of Government and Public Policy, O.P. Jindal Global University in Sonipat. She completed her D.Phil. from the Department of International Development, University of Oxford. Her research broadly focuses on geographies of waste and the changing caste-based social dynamics among sanitation and informal waste workers in Delhi.
All are welcome
Enquiries: asian@sant.ox.ac.uk or 01865-274559
