Notes from the workshop When All That Is High-Tech Turns Into Waste.
Researching E-Waste Seminar
Lancaster University
26th of February
First session: Make and Remake
Åsa Ståhl and Kristina Lindström
Move and moved by e-waste
Åsa and Kristina are interested in inventive problem making (Mike Michael) and how we might be move and
be moved by e-waste
To move – to intervene, but also to be moved by.
The project started with the project Unravel/Repeat.
Åsa and Kristina acted as rag and bone women to collect stories.
Experiences the becoming of obsolescence as characterized by its relations rather than situated in discrete
objects
We requested mobile phones and people started to find things they had forgotten and gave them to us to put
them into new relations - but people also decided that they wanted to keep the phones Potentially it could also have become an alibi for people to keep the phones Moved by - small shifts
After this collection Åsa and Kristina set out to activate the stories through a kind of relational reordering.
Åsa and Kristina created a SMS novel and this came back through the phones - only possible to subscribe to
the novel as long as the batteries lasted.
Åsa and Kristina attempted to perform obsolescence and sensitize the subscribers to all the different kinds of
care and work of keeping these relations working.
Future projects: Move and moved - aim to continue the work to engender a more hands an engagement to
create what we frame as publics in the making - publics that gather to make thins - where the actors as not
pre given but made in the making.
Through setting this up - as a response to the theme of Transmediale: Afterglow, Åsa and Kristina responded
to the SMS novel - rather than working with the afterglow of the phones - they worked with the afterglow of
some of these phones.
Åsa and Kristina called the project mobile mining. The title came from an encounter on fieldwork. I won’t give
you my phone, there’s too much gold in it – quote from a participant in unravel / repeat
Publics in the making
Publics that gather together to make things
Publics where the issues and actors are not pre-given but also in the making
Åsa and Kristina encountered other examples of this mobile mining - precarious workers and domestic
entrepreneurs who use their own waste to look for gold as well as artists
Perhaps not the most responsible but it did engage conversations - such as engagements with people about
mining, as well as work in the press which mentioned this work in relation to the new colonialism
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It’s not just why we are gathering with whose there but the longer temporal and spatial networks
Discreteness, subject making, long networks temporality and spatiality
Inviting participants to engage with their everyday socio material engagements because it is generative
Particularly important to work with these as they are part of our everyday life
Åsa and Kristina hope to collaborate on these shared issues and interests to combine quite specific way of
working with their specific way of working.
Lara Houston
Nuancing breakdown: Repair as valuing in the mobile phone workshops of
downtown Kampala, Uganda
To explore repair as a process of valuing
Repair is in between waste and value
Lara quotes Lepawsky and Mather to think about the ways in which e-waste have no essential ontology:
“things didn’t hold together as things, they were radically transformed”
We shouldn’t figure things through beginnings and endings - but instead we should study the site of
breakdown
It is tempting to think of the breakage in the materiality of the device - but what was revealed was the
extreme diversity of what breakdown could be
For something to work takes work (Law and Singleton)
So I really like the idea of performance as the idea of becoming unstuck and how we might think of this in a
relational way.
Mol et al. also make this observation.
The moment in which a mobile might still perform
What happens when the phone stops performing
What happens when we start to see these performances coming unstuck are to processes of wasting and
valuing - repair is so interesting as it inhabits these
An endeavor to remake the relations in the network - in order to get that phone working again
These are both acts of commerce but also acts of care in Kampala
Jason - When I arrived at the workshop - Jason was repairing the phone and I watched it as it unfolded this
phone had a screen problem. This screen was no longer working and he had unclipped the screen and he
used a razor. He showed me the phone and held up a magnifying glass - and I saw a little dent - Jason said
this was a big problem.
Lara shows a series of very detailed close-up images of the repair - taking us through a visual narrative
Referring to the Nokia hardware diagram he starts to add copper wires that causes a new path that will take
the signal to different parts of the phone
Its a very beautiful craft process - he turns to the connecter and adds a wire one by one to the contacts - all
the time he is checking the connections - and all the time he is using the multimeter - he passes the wired
through the phone.
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He holds it very gently to make the smallest possible connection
So the wired are threaded through an existing wire
The decision of what gets repaired and what doesn’t is multifaceted The thesis follows objects such as the Nokia hardware library - that aren’t local and this process of valuing
go beyond what is in the head of technician so valuing is helping in each solder This process of soldering is a valuing in action
Repair is achieved by a new set of connections - so it suggests that we need to move past repair as a
restoration - instead it happened here through a new set of grafts onto the device These alternative pathways restore functionality but they also have a very different materiality they are very
fragile and liable to disconnection
Even though these connections are much more fragile the phone is functional for a while - and that
fold into different regimes and different temporalities and different ways of working are acceptable
for different people
Q: What kind of education did Jason have?
A; He doesn’t have any formal training in electronics but he is certainly the person I brought my phone to
Q: did he get the phone to work?
A: yes but for how long I’m not sure!
Blanca Callén
Repairing (electronic) vulnerabilities: Towards an ethics of waste
US rice imports ‘contain harmful levels of lead’ irrigation of rice with water containing pollutants from e-waste.
E-waste is highly polluting on bodies, land etc - is not a one way trip - we become the contaminated rice that
we eat and the computer we through away.
E-Waste is a critical standpoint and explanatory operator through which to make visible, analyze and
comprehend our modes of existence and everyday bonds that weave the sustaining matrix of our life in
common.
Repairing practices of e-waste confront us with failures, obsolescence, breakages, filth
How are can we host all these vulnerabilities as a condition of possibility - how to support a sustainable life between diverse natural cultural elements?
All these questions point to a wider ethics of care for matter.
How to raise ethical engagements by and within others, vis-a-vis our finite and limited material world?
Repair as care
Repair & maintenance // Feminist ecology economy
Multi focus ethnographic fieldwork
1) Collection /Recovery
Working with waste is often practical
Collecting waste require skills - embodied knowledge repeated in the environment
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They develop a way to make science meaningful, not only through recognition but also transformation
The commitment to care can be a speculative, and a speculative effort.
This is just a process
What is neglected of overlooked, what we forget leave aside or what fails.
Care: responsibility or responsiveness, feminist theory
2) Care, repair, hack
Situated enquiry a trial and error method
Repairing is “about making the most of our resources and knowledge”
No duties or moral
The more you get attached to something the more you extend its life cycle
Repair by defying computers unity/singularity through skilled embodies labor
Care for (and cared by) systems: ecologies
Repair as care is not an individual experience but a more complex and networked one
Hacking - is the experimental hacking of systems - to break the rules creatively - combining things with
things until something comes up
Transformation of materials shapes and functions until solving a problem or creating a new system
Care – the result of a mutual dialogical and ongoing sensual and situated enquiry a process of needs
interpretation and mutual adaptation. Because of its experimental nature it overwhelms any standards
A mutual adaptation
3) Taking apart
Taking apart devices to turn them into materials - metals etc.
As most people do not have the knowledge to repair and must extract value, they smash computers to
extract capital.
They make a quick calculation on how to extract value
It is important to act quickly and cleanly
As one more speaker notes - you never know what you find
The most precious material is the copper
Repair might also be destruction or somethings destruction might be another’s repair Care: limited, not intrinsically good or contextual inquiry
There might also be a particular ethics care to oneself and to the environment - but in this case repair might
be another destruction or destruction might be another repair
Creating new dependencies
Object fetishes look for keeping things alive at all costs In every case and situation - what does care mean for whom? A theory of care is incomplete unless its
embedded in a theory of justice - ethics and politics cannot be separated we should include those
subjugated bodies and the hidden effects of production and consumption -
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Durability and Stability through reparation > sustainability of the systems and ecologies of practices.
An ethics of e-waste that needs to be from a situated multi level political analysis
Production and consumption. Repair and maintenance could easily be consumed as a trendy profitable
market by capitalism
About the interdependent ambivalent embodied relationships with some naturecultural ‘other’ computerswater-rice-bodies
As feminist care ethics - care is never done between equals - we cannot possibly care for everything Blanca proposes that pointing at matters despite remaining hidden are still crucial and necessary.
Conclusions;
 collective responsibility from collective resources, competences and knowledges
 careful profiting
 reparability
 experimental and creative character and repair : innovative and transformative repair
 caring of e-waste connects very intimately
 how can we collectively understand recourses in a fair and less painful way?
Discussion of the three presentations:
Jennie Olofsson: Space: all the papers seem to engage with the importance of space and how space matters
- how to think of practices of waste - thinking about the practices of place and how that values Blanca Callén: relevant as its one of the elements that affects these values - so that its possibilities - so that
its options - and opportunities of different solutions - they are very well connected and global processes.
JO: also mentions the connection between the urban and the rural - everyone is very keen to push the waste
out of the urban areas.
Lara Houston: I expected repair to be super local and in a way it was but things like the Nokia hardware
library - are made from turkey, Iran etc - so in addition to the big other places were these very
heterogeneous traveling objects that came though technicians engagements with web forums - immaterial
routings to place - relationship to the technician to technician was very important - so this geographically
downtown area was important as the imagined proxies such as china - and these other sites to so my thesis
is to continue to investigate these other sites and their possibilities
Lucy Suchman: I wanted to raise the point of ecologies of practice with the conditions of possibility - as I am
struck with the moment of repair - the relationship between that kind of repair and skills, and the conditions
and possibilities of hacking and then the waste pickers breaking things in order to extract materials - so what
ways are ecologies of practice also ecologies of skills and values - and finally I am just thinking about
hacking as in Blanca’s cases - and hacking as on the idea of innovation - which I really like in the sense that
it undoes the production and reproduction economy - but I wonder if it really does - as we become still
invested with ideas of newness so what kind of productions are going on there so I am a little cautious of
how we might think of innovation in relation to Jason or the waste pickers.
LH: in my work there are already hackers who make these tools- so I didn’t label anything hackers
LS: That does suggest that hackers make their own tools there and that is a case of where newness shows
up in order to repair something
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BC: In my case nameless hackers make new devices - using all pieces of the computer - whereas the
breakers just provide the “raw” materials. Ecologies of repair - there is a very important knowledge - the
knowledge of the materials - that they were collecting - there was a big divide between them and this divide
was used to get an economic advantage between each other. This knowledge came from previous jobs, or
childhoods - in the sense of repair it was quite a limited ecology - they didn't have the tools as Lara showed
in the workshops in Kampala - so it was limited possibility to improve their living economically. So if we put
the label of hacking - this has to do with the new devices they made – I am not sure if this fits on the waste
pickers - the innovation of the waste pickers has to do with their way of life more than their way of living - so
for me the innovation - is in this context of earning a living and surviving in a context which is quite rough for
them.
Jonnet Middleton: thinking about my research in Cuba on the innovators and rationalizers board - this is
about restoring function - rather than newness - so its really important to unravel definitions of innovation.
And there are lots of examples from non-western contexts.
Jennifer Gabrys: I was interested in all the papers about the way they discuss examples of intimate and long
networks and the ways in which repair was taking place - in all of the examples repairs were reaching out to
Brazilian mines, turkey, china, rice and other types of long networks - so there is something about the ways
in which repair shifts these practices and might be reconceptualised and advanced as a practice - are they
sites of experimentation. It quite easy to get caught up in the workshop - how might it extend out to the long
networks - does it recast the relationships - to the gold mine in Brazil.
Kristina Lindström: its a difficult question - as the sewing circles or hack days become much about peoples
own experiences but the longer networks - are difficult to engage with but its something we want to continue
working on
Alison Stowel: publics in the making - the closer you get to something to more it expands and the longer way
from where we are simultaneously get to - it needs an uncertainty of who is present there needs to be an
invitation
JG: you all focused on the waste side - what if you focused on the manufacturing - and began to embrace
the ecologies to think about the longer networks of repair - that there are different repair practices proliferate
- maybe that is one way these longer networks could be drawn out - repair as something which exceeds
these networks - waste in anticipation and becoming
Åsa Ståhl: In the iron ore mines - there are also other mines being opened up in Sweden - as we are in a
design conversation all time there are questions of how to bring this into design - where could design start but not just wait till something is out there Kristina Lindström: one anecdote when we collected the Iphones - one women had tried to use her phone
but it was to old for the service - and it was also the participation of services that make them too old - this is
also part of an anticipation - loop of not just how the phones are designed but also how the things phones
are connected - to them. In our other works we have been thinking about these notions of standardization
and the mines and this is our thinking on the e-waste.
Blanca Callén: it appeared in my work that the discussion of most people had quite a clear idea of what good
design might be for example - its quite easy to repair desktop computers - but not for laptops and there are
no agreements to standardize the power - you even need different screw drivers to open these computers there should be open spaces for people to take the things to be reused. They had clear ideas on how to
make things better
LH: I did some work in workshops that were authorized by manufacturers and it was interesting as they were
very distant to the workshop and the linkages were down through knowledge exchange systems - such as
online training through a portal - rationalizing the messy work of repair - so that was the kind of circulation of
knowledges. Another manufacturer was a Chinese entry to Africa - their knowledge exchange was through
sending one of the members of the company to the workshop floor - they would joke that everything was
exchanged through excel spreadsheets. Different kinds of corporations understood differently how to
manage these links - especially in places far from the corporate h.q. - also highlighted the limitations it placed
on repair - e.g. the pirate practices. It would be interesting to use those sites of repair of where these come
into tension
JG: it interesting in terms of what happens to objects at the end of their lives
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Felipe: I saw lots of resonances between them - and the stories of taking things apart and putting them
together - I used to live with a friend and was always surprised how he had things labeled - waste and issues
of care. the fantasy that you can through away a part and its a big piece of the problem of not caring about
waste making. Not caring about ontologies - the system itself becomes a very reductive ontology - so in it is
a way it is a way of responding to system -to interrupt the protocols.
BC: do you mean a criticism of the system logic?
P: yes I was interested in your work on obsolescence - i don’t want to rarify the making of objects for my
benefit - is there is a possibility of thinking about parts as relationally rather than things as discrete Alison Stowel: we have been working with patch working as are ontology, epistemology and methodology its to take the parts and put them into new relations - but they are already parts of other relations. So what
we want to say with these relations is there is never a discrete relation however small - we can perhaps stop
it - it will look like an entity at some point - but always thinking about as relational - and it will shift.
LH: what is in our presentations is time - we are thinking about things over time as revealing - that things are
going through these different distributed and transitory ontologies is happening through time - and time isn't
always a key motif - if your thinking about practices that continuously go on - there is a temporality implied is not named until you get into the empirical - we think about taking apart in time - thing become visible as
parts in time. Objects hold together indifferent ways - is the idea of a kin that can hold together materials - so
it has to be the same make and model or near enough - the dead kin that can be cannabilized - objects that
cannot be fixed are kept as parts - but they are not wholes they become a collection of parts - as the
transistor gets removed and transplanted. Through time we can see the changes between the parts and
wholes BC: what is clear in my case is that it is a challenge to researchers to take account of the possibility - in my
case it was my objective to look at the proposals - some of them work and some of them don’t work
depending on the conditions - to take account for these new possibilities - to take account for these different
ecologies and systems is the challenge as researchers - things are not easy - even on things like
knowledges, materials, proposals - systems theory is nothing if you don't explain about the pieces.
Filipe Raglianti: I really like the word patchwork - you have the practice of knitting and cutting but you also
have these semiotic patching of motherboard etc LS: the shift to kinship and canibalising the dead kin - its a much more subtle way of thinking about alignment
and compatibility and the complexity of how you know what things are close enough - how can you take
those wires and make them into kin - which isn't completely unrelated to notions of standardizations but
works in the cracks of those regimes and knowing how to find those relations that cross cut these.
Alison Stowel: how do you feel about how these skills of repair might threaten the current skills of working
with IT? as for me some of these skills and terms of technicians - are also skills of bluechip companies - what
do you think about that - would this underground job market have the potential to reconfigure the job market?
LH: for me this is the IT market - in Kampala there are good universities and a lack of graduate jobs - there
are some interesting works around clustering of hardware production in Nigeria where what you say is
happening - where the assembly of local pcs have become a massive and major it market that eclipses the
supplier market - so i think that is happening in some parts of east Africa - they are indigenous it industries
and wether they threaten a larger sense of corporate careers is really contextual.
Jon: the two of you have been doing fieldwork in underprivileged communities - are you activists? or do you
remain distanced
BC: I offer myself to give experiences - as some of the waste pickers want to become a collective - so my
connection my offer is to give them some experiences of other cooperatives and waste pickers. And these
waste pickers were evicted last July - and I am helping them with the process and making connections with
authorities and having one leg in the academy and sharing information and experiences.
LH: for me no - I think repair is a precarious repair - but not in a way that is underprivileged - they were
teaching me!
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Second session, Media and materiality
Jennie Olofsson
On the ontology of the screen
Jennie discusses how disembodied media affects us in a material way.
The initial picture shows TVs used to stabilize the paddling pool. What is interesting about dysfunctional
screens? Breakdown unveil this artifact that otherwise tends to disappear. It challenges ideas of the screen
as a disembodied medium
Recycling processes complicates ideas of what screens are
Jennie discusses the ontological status of screens and how they change as they are broken or discarded.
Three examples of this:
Video: Wii controller through screen.
Video: Saso Sedlacek’s video project The Big Switch Off.
Online forum
These examples show how the screen transforms from a disembodied medium to a material object.
As the TV is smashed it is also subjected to an ontological shift, focus is directed at the material object
Problematic: “immaterial” new media.
Saso’s work was to bring attention to discarded projects here and now.
The forum discussion about the screen status discusses the ontological shift and focuses on its material
qualities
The presentation focuses on the problems of discussing the immaterial of media.
Jennifer Gabrys
A more-than-empirical materiality: Rethinking the problem of electronic waste
Take this opportunity to interrogate my own work - and the more-than empirical research methodology I
discussed in digital research - and interrogate a bit more what that might be.
Asking after the materiality of the waste and what counts as matter
Interesting in the papers this morning to see how many kinds of materiality were discussed
So how do we do research on e-waste?
Thinking about the different fossils that emerged in the work - not only was there a tail here - but it was also
quite material - however also what kind of imaginaries are bundled into this research and what might count
as a proper empirical study - how do you get at the relatively dispersed qualities of e-waste?
So I thought perhaps the way to do this was to go in - house - into the WEEE store
So in our project we often have to encounter the materiality of these devices
What is the materiality of inhabiting this space?
Drawing on the work on Isabelle Stengers - what are the ways in which what we take to be empirical is not
always as simple as it seems - through the work of whitehead -, what is the temporality of empirical
observation?
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A commitment to the empirical - but not assuming an object is what we always said it is; instead that it has
capacities - a more-than-human
Empirical is not just about objects but its also about relations So how to think of our material engagements?
Digitality also commits us to practice, which makes objects hold in a certain way, so we can think about the
way that this allows particular materiality to take hold.
What counts as materiality is also a productive and destructive process - site and value
Investigating the empirical through the theoretical makes it possible to draw out what could count as digital
objects
This starts to reconstitute how we talk about empirical research
What do we mean by empirical
What do we mean by material
How to return to electronics in the actual making of them?
In Citizen Sense we are making devices and testing off the shelf electronics - and this has led us to question
- what are the limitations and the affordances of monitoring devices and how that is translated into them
Might it be that something is animated through other devices
What is it that commits us to different digital commitments?
it raises the question of mattering - the extended life of these objects - and how though their materiality
forces us to think about these practices differently
What is interesting in the work of Stengers is how material practices always connect us to struggle.
If you begin to open up into the ecologies of practices and allow for multiple divergent ways of what make
practices matter, what kinds of more than empirical research might emerge in this space?
What practices and what matter do we attend to - and how does this move beyond the clean concept of
materiality?
Also Steve Shaviro has spoken about how things have a vague presence but also work on multiple registers
- things in process, things breaking down and transforming - things that are affecting us on multiple registers
Thinking about a more-than empirical - vectors of feeling, speculative research and methods - not just
describing but activating what that might be.
Thinking about speculative empiricism - that is a process of unfolding and becoming
How materialization is not a singular engagement - see also Gabrys on Energy
Thinking about environmentalism - if you look at the way smart meters articulate and materialize energy what does it mean to materialize energy in that way which is assumed empirical way of making things
evident and this runs through a lot of environmental project. By having something materialize
And this is where more inventive problem making of Mike Michael is quite useful
Something that might develop new relations and how it materializes are more than just stuff but unfolding in
multiple directions
How can they begin to speculate different practices such as why we are so tied into articulating something
through electronic space.
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Sometimes by hesitating - rather than pretending to resolve an issue - perhaps we allow materiality to
wonder and be a surprise - as an object to wonder - as something that you can’t just fix and has splintering
pathways and struggles.
Q: on matter//materiality - to be continued in the discussion
Jon Raundalen
Technolgocial utopianism in the press coverage of new media.
E-waste
co-creator of the ecology, environment, culture network (EECN)
The antology Media and the ecological crisis (Routledge, forthcoming 2014)
Rationale for the new book - was that there wasn’t really any other views than the
to consolidate new media ecology and ecological ethics and media technology An increasing awareness of the way new media technology is portrayed in the media. It seems to be devoid
of the ethics.
However, there should be material in abundance for media to dig into. For example, exploitation of workers,
carbon emissions, workers right violations, and the e waste.
The vast stream of waste has been funneled back into the countries of the production.
Newspaper reports on these things are very rare. There are some examples like the foxcomm
In 2007, Jon started researching Norwegian newspaper to see what they were writing. The coverage was
almost devoid of any environmental concerns. Questions concerned:
- what was being covered
- what were the conditions of this journalists
Jon also attended the trade show and conducted interviews with leading technology journalists.
In Norway, the average consumer buys a new mobile once a year, and a new laptop every year and a half.
Mobile phones and computers have gone from being specialized stories to be front-page news - whenever
there is any development to our devices the newspapers will cover it - knowing that it will sell papers.
Buyers-guides are on the front page of newspapers - trademarks of new media coverage
on the same page - illustrates a story of the dangers of pornography.
On the front page on the newspaper we see the same pattern as in academia: that the use of media might
be harmful but a blind spot to the environmental use.
The newspaper article is similar to the advertising insert - it doesn’t have anything to do with any of the
problems of consumption.
Journalism walks a fine line between advertising and journals and often oversteps the line.
The overall view is now of technological determinism.
Journalism does not focus on any of the problems - instead it focuses on shininess, prices, use etc. When
environmental concerns are mentioned it is in terms of green washing, e.g. new tv:s that reduce energy
consumption.
In some cases the green washing is more obvious - e.g. in the work of ACER - where the position the new
light laptop as conserving resources on the earth.
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Articles are almost blind to the impact of e-waste.
Most articles outside of consumer journalism focus on education and ICT, solving problems in healthcare,
the positive effects of these devices.
Also in politics a lot of reports - about how the distribution of Ipads etc will get us closer to paper free offices but no discussion on the harm of these devices.
So what are the positive stories that technology enjoys?
SMS activists - the mobile phone is positioned as the powerful tool by which all injustice is stopped, also
examples of twitter for peace
Typical of all the reporting - hardly ever recognition of the ecological problems
Jon also mentions some of the pressures under which the consumer journalists work under - drawing on
Norman Fairclough’s analysis - that includes the micro, and macro sociological.
There have been a lot of cutbacks and the journalists have to publish on several platforms research shows
that the average journalist produces three times much content in 2005 than in 1985.
Are there any hopes of changing the discourse?
Self reinforcing pressure on the journalists which make them more dependent on the readymade press
releases and the consumer demand for these articles
Technological optimism runs deep
However, car journalism has changed and incorporated green technologies etc.
Interview with journalists they are prevented for writing on environmental issues. They have never been
approached by the environmental and if they only knew about it they wouldn’t mind writing about it - thus the
environmental lobbyists should speak the same language as the manufacturing companies.
The consumer journalists have a great power because the technology manufacturer desperately needs the
consumer education only they can provide.
Discussion of the three presentations
Questions:
Lucy Suchman: interested in the question of what counts as empirical research - maybe part of the way I
hear that questions is not through Stengers and Whitehead but is that through anthropology and thinking
about the developments in anthropology and feminist science studies - the difference between empirical and
empiricism is crucial - that creating empirical research is making stories accountable than other than just
what you could imagine an engagement with something else to which your stories are accountable - so I
guess the question how you are understanding the extensions - that is important and makes the question of
matter and materiality - rise - is the other of matter - meaning? is the other of matter meaning? I think we
need materiality and discourse together - there seems to me something to hold across all of this - articulating
the temporalities and messiness of objects - things in motion Jennifer Gabrys: not suggesting that materiality is cleaved off from culture - the notion of using natural history
of electronics in thinking of these things together - push further to think about the multiple materialities - that
aren’t separated - what then do you do with that - is it enough just to attend to these electronic corpses - if i
was going to grasp the difference between matter and materiality it might be that that matter is something
more settled and materiality is something more in process Lara Houston: the big question in e-waste is the problematic of the material.
JG: often the problem can be framed in quite a reductive way - the materiality can become a problem of
thinking how the waste can just go away.
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Alison Stowel: Its really interesting to hear about the notions of repair - as we often missing this in these
encounters - my own experience of working with computers - have impacts on bodies - and invisible risks we are navigating around this element - and why is this - is this somehow and optimism for technology?
JG: in digital rubbish I avoid talking about users as so many people don’t get to be users - as they are
stripping computers - its something we have been concerned about on the citizen sense project - who is
involved in that and what are there positions involved in that?
Alison Stowel: I am thinking about what happens when we are extracting gold - when we are using the acids
we had to do it outdoors - we had calculated colder temperatures so we used to much heat - afterwards we
had to go back to look at the photographs of that - to see what it might have done.
JG: it is a different type of witnessing not strictly as a kind of discursive -informal economies and
experiencing it.
Alison Stowel: In the environments in which stripping computers are stripped people are always exposed to
the toxins etc fro the parts.
Lucy Suchman - thinking about this in relation to the parts - and perhaps the things we call objects are things
which are encapsulated as objects - these objects are held together as to insure or give us the illusion that
the boundaries that we need to stay safe are there -once we start to take them apart the dynamic
materialize of those gets much more dynamic -for whom are the batteries made and who gets to do the work
of undoing these batteries Felipe: thinking about situatedness and boundaries we are always involved in the making of it - i.e Barad
would not say we are in space and time she would say we are of space and time. There is a case to be
made between matter and materials - in the case of screens when it looks right if you take the screen with
different arrangements JG: mentions Lisa Parks’ (2004) chapter on the screen.
Third session: Methods and knowledge
Jolanda van Rooijen
Will the amendment of WEEE II reach its initial goals? A shift from illegal export to
the concept of re-use
The WEEE directive is changing focus, from scrutiny the consumption of electronic products to re-use. Reuse has a positive implications, no one questions the one who is dealing with re-use. The amount of e-waste
is counted in kilos, which is a problem.
3 intensions for changing WEEE:
Increasing amount of collected waste
Combating illegal exports
Harmonising registration systems within the EU
Formal input: governmental, NGO, consumer and manufacturers
Project method: discourse analysis of submissions from these groups
SCOT framework
Consider the system as an artifact
Determined the social groups and saw recycling system as the technological artifact
Written input examples:
City council describes municipal collection points for waste only, not a place to judge products’ feasibility for
re-use
Not part of their agenda
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Security forces: artefacts containing hard disks are better suited for material recycling
Recyclers: suggesting other models, increasing tax making options around leasing rather than purchase
Producer responsibility organisations: products suitable for re-use have to be handed back to the producers
Discussion:
Shift of focus away from the illegal export to the concept of re-use
9 types of re-use identified
Initial aims of changing WEEE sidelined
Particular forms of e-waste imagined – no light bulbs for example
Re-use only applies to certain waste streams in the submissions – these tend to be consumer streams
Socially acceptable to say that you are doing re-use without being challenged
Re-use before discarding or after? Mixed up
Framework gives formal definition but not used here
Second hand markets
Re-use as a noble and good hearted thing to do – overlap with illegal exports
Re-use as a synonym for design for repair as in computer manuals
Re-use as a synonym for design for recycling / repairability
Re-use as a synonym for recycling using components
Repurposing: WEEE for design
Revisiting 3 initial intentions:
Increasing amount of waste collected not mentioned
Combating illegal exports – shift of focus to re-use
Harmonising the registration system – already had one unified system
SCOT power relations diagram?
Shift: producers should pay for recycling but now recyclers pay to access waste
Josh Lepawsky
How do we know e-waste? Electronic discards and the double social life of
methods.
Method assemblage – John Law
Making some aspects of phenomena present and others absent
What’s knowingly excluded but manifest absences ‘othernesses’ generated too
E-waste: choosing / materializing what e-waste is, generative of absences
Disappear in the process of asking some questions, and not others
These are collateral realities
Other realities generated, presuppose particular worlds
Social science methods perform in the world-creating of their objects
Drawing attention to ontological politics
Social life of photography and video
2002 report by Basel Action Network
Cited 165 times, one of the highest ratings
Uses documentary photograph and film
History of documentary – objective, reformist
What methodological hinterlands crated here?
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1st person eye witnessing, claims to knowledge
Framing, picturing etc. critical to the conversation
Images and text designed to evoke the modest witness/ing subject
These generate a world
Particular finding that travels: 50-80% e-waste illegal exported
Export – problematics unraveled in congressional hearings based on this statistic, it becomes part of the
‘known’ background. Trustworthy authority
Documentary film able to draw on their historical hinterlands
Obvious and taken for granted – giving us access to unvarnished ‘raw fact’
Trade statistics database –
Another way of knowing e-waste
International difficulties in measuring:
No agreed definition of e-waste
No non-arbitrary ways to categorise
No existing international trade data distinguishes between new and re-sold estimates made using price
information that is also derivative
Illicit or undocumented trade is excluded (See Karen Nordstrom)
Invisible to state agencies but we also depend on these invisibilities
Nation-states generated / produced by international trade data: territories in the data but also not only states
– other landmasses
E-waste discourses on developed countries dumping in developing countries, but this also makes us blind to
middle class consumers and legitimate markets for objects
This formatting of e-waste misses domestic sources in its internationalism
Ecological fallacy
Developed / developing as separate territorial groups
Boundary definitions are problematic in statistics that get formulated in policy and other restrictions
Both of these format e-waste as an “end of pipe problem” post-consumption
Other possible e-wastes disappear, such as production discards
Both intended and unintended
2011: bacteria from e-waste site able to digest BPA plastic(?)
A form of life that has learned / is learning to live off e-waste
Myra Hird – indeterminacy, outside of our capacity to know
Human life as premised on bacterial life
Indeterminacy is a fundamental quality of waste
Discussion of the two presentations:
Jennifer asks Josh: Indeterminacy in working with trade database – are you going so far as to make a claim
that this might lead to a politics? Or reinforcing the idea of indeterminacy?
No – we can act. If indeterminacy is a fundamental part of waste worlds then how do we act under these
circumstances? Not indeterminacy for its down sake.
Is the question also about what we practically do?
Earlier work presented a counter narrative to BAN’s travel of e-waste North to South. That it is a fig-leaf to
what’s really happening? So where does this take us?
Trade data – ways of encountering the problem? More inventive problem-making?
Q from J’s book on ‘learning to waste well’. Methodological lessons – reframing questions to say ‘how do we
do e-waste well’?
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If we are trying to “solve the e-waste problem” – even if we restate the problem – there is another one
emerging: e.g. Post-consumer waste versus producer waste.
Link to presentation:
http://scalar.usc.edu/works/reassembling-rubbish/how-do-we-know-e-waste-electronic-discards-andthe-double-social-life-of-methods?path=the-rubbish-bin
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27th of February
Summary of the first day.
Topics:
-
Regimes of value/Economies: From waste to resource.
-
Ecologies of practices (skills/knowledges): reuse-hack-repair
-
Ontological tensions: functionality, status, materiality, media, brokeness (taking things
apart/together)....
-
Accountability of e-waste: long/intimate networks explaining waste (space/time)...What is a good
accountability? (How to engage well with e-waste?). (Connection with methodology discussion).
-
Ethics: responsible/fair way of dealing with e-waste (measures, practical proposals, also
researching).
Concepts/Theoretical perspectives: ANT, Feminism (Ecologies, Technofeminism...), New Materialism...??
Methods: Ethnographic fieldwork, discourse analysis, statistics/quantitative...???
Debate on e-waste
Offshoring (John Urry): spatial division of labour. Mobilities of e-waste.
Markets: emerging nations dealing with IT considering the scarcity of resources.
Skills & knowledges: what does e-waste add to the debate of informal/tacit knowledges?
1) How do we interrogate and research e-waste, whether through fieldwork, analysis of technologies or study
of waste?
What counts of e-waste, and how the definition of e-waste is changing as electronic goods are relabeled,
objects of green washing, turned into charity.
Also, it is important to remember that most of the waste that is produced is produced at a pre-consumer
stage, that is, in the making of electronic devices. Important of include mining, production, manufacturing.
Also urban mining.
Jennifer mentions as an example that 99 % of the material that goes in to making a microchip goes away.
Similarly, mining composes a huge part of the world’s energy consumption.
One suggestion is to use the term “discarded technologies”. This term focuses on the very process, the
practice of discarding, wasting.
Wasting instead of waste! Process. Lifecycle.
Jennifer mentions the term “Ecologies of practices”.
Jennie: How the term waste trumps other categories, such as computers, mobile phones, e-readers and
televisions. As an example, entering the search term “computer” on one electronic waste recycling
company’s webpage, it did not recognize the computer as waste but in terms of the computers that facilitated
waste picking with the trucks…
Lara suggests: “e-waste in the making” or “e-wasting”, “assemblages”. Messy multiplicity...complex of
assemblages: in the making. Tricky to bounder e-waste as an object.
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Jon and Filipe: Finding a firm ground. (And then in terms of numbers…More transdiciplinarity?
Chemistry?.'Proves'?) But also, following the numbers, see how they affect you…What can we do as (social)
scientists?
Blanca: How to establish a dialogue with people who are measuring e-waste in terms of kilos?
2) What inventive methods, practices and approaches might be developed to address e-waste that go
beyond the usual waste management discourses?
Numbers are performative of actors and policies. STS & management discourses. What do numbers perform
about e-waste conception? (for example: EU directive is dictated in kilograms). How do we dialogue with
WEEE policies?
The re-labeling of waste to charity donations…
Lara traced a sending of mobile phones from London to Kampala…
Sending mid-life electronic products to developing countries…
Fieldwork is important to nuance the understanding of e-waste…
The change of technology… What does recycling means? Need to open the black box of recycling: what
does recycle mean? Different conditions, results, effects?
Jennie and Blanca: Green washing of e-waste…
100 % away from landfill instead of 100 % recycling! What is 'good' or 'bad' e-waste?...for example, what
happens with the discussion and figures about e-waste and recycling when we introduce the repairability?
Blurring limits of the concept of e-waste.
What about the methods used to interrogate e-waste?
Felipe: What are the blind spots of ethnographic methods? Through ethnographic fieldwork, we try to
interrupt the de-materialization of e-waste. To re-materialize. Any method works as long as it interrupts the
normal ways of dealing with waste.
Circular economies: following the things' approach.
Waste and methods as political categories…
There is also a need to acknowledge the macro-perspectives…
The cease of care conjures up rubbish (John Scanlan), just as care points toward functionality.
The notion of activism.
The mixture of approaches is important.
E-waste as second hand good,
Indeterminacy of e-waste: debate between Hird & Gille. How to materialise e-waste?...connected with the
practices and struggles that we are engaged with. What are the commitments with different methods and
perspectives? Ecologies of practices (Stengers): how different practices come to matter?...against relativism,
against one unique way of accountability (science/rationality). Conditions of possibilities for different
infrastructures.
Åsa: It seems like there are two stories that needs to be told simultaneously…
Jennifer: How to develop an ecology of practice? Interdisciplinarity…
Lara: Think about infrastructures of repair…
Jennifer: What kinds of infrastructures (ways of recycling) emerge in these informal ecologies?
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Discussion, and thinking about a future conference on e-waste.
Formats:
Kristina: Workshops focusing on the material, hands-on practices. Facilitate an art exhibition.
Jennie: Mentions the electronic knitting circle, HUMlab. Repair workshop.
Permanent stations where you can partake in repair practices. Informal chatting.
Repairing, hacking, taking apart.
Åsa: Retreat. A core group staying for four, five days and invited participants being invited for one or tow
days. The staying-together is important. Making a deliverable, something that can be circled as a direct
consequence of the gathering. Enhancing the risks, challenging the disciplinary comfort zone.
Blanca: Finding a common topic for dialoguing different positions. Inter-sectorial or inter-disciplinary
dialogues around different conflicts, life cycles' stages of technologies. (such as chemistry, social science,
political science...).
Lara: Annual disobedience day, transgressions, disagreements, moving boundaries.
Jon: Getting into dialogue with the industry. The producers of electronic products, designers of electronic
goods.
Blanca: Contact with scrap dealers.
Jennifer: Field trips to recycling facilities, sanitary facilities. (Stuff in motion).
Lara: Match make, interdisciplinary collaborations
Jennifer and Jon: Framing in terms of “the green economy”
Felipe: Bring your own waste, set up an exhibition.
Jon: Policy debates.
Åsa: Mentions the importance of preparatory work, panel sessions and selecting
moderators.
Jon: Mentions the importance of a prepared moderator.
Jennie: Paper presentations, panel sessions, interdisciplinary dialogues.
Topics:
Green economies/circular economies.
Accounting for waste. Figures.
Terminology: what is e-waste, materiality.
Problem making. How do you formulate e-waste as a problem? Make visible.
Participants:
Industry
Business
Designers
Scrap dealers
Recycling industry
Manufacturers
Activists
Scholars
Practitioners
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NGO:s / 3rd Sector.
Public
Media/Journalists
Governmental agencies
Policymakers
And specific persons who would be interesting to invite:
Catherine Gibson
Steven Jackson
Kavita Phillips
Venues/Dates:
Risky areas.
June, August and December?
Spain, Portugal, Sweden
Partners/Funding:
Industrial ecology
FORMAS (The Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning)
ESRC (Social Research Council, UK) Knowledge Exchange. Grant. Call open now. Deadline 31st of March.
SAMkul (research program)
European Science Foundation (ESF): Exploratory.
Coast Action. European Networks
Step / UN University ??
Industry companies??
Other ways to continue:
 Establishing an e-mail list (Blanca will do).

Edited volume (special issue) of scientific journal.

Blogsite: wordpress...for sharing information, calls, coordination, projects, etc.

Write a text of presentation of the e-waste network that works as a summary of the discussions that
took place during the e-waste seminar (for the 'About us' section of the wordpress) (by Dennis Zuev
and Jon Raundalen). To be published also, as a kind of summary, in “Discard Studies” blogsite?

Collection of online 'working papers', to be published on the Blogsite/Wordpress.

Take advantage of other conferences for proposing “e-waste streams”, as previous and less effort
dialogues for an eventual e-waste Conference. Some examples: “Design ecologies” Conference…
June 2015, Stockholm. // Feminist Materialist Conference, Barcelona. 25-26 September, 2014.
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