Remains of the everyday : a century of recycling in Beijing / Joshua Goldstein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Goldstein, Joshua, 1965- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Refuse and refuse disposal--China--Beijing--20th century.

Refuse and refuse disposal.

Recycling (Waste, etc.)--China--Beijing--20th century.

Recycling (Waste, etc.).

Recycled products--China--Beijing--20th century.

Recycled products.

Recycled products--Government policy--China--Beijing--20th century.

Beijing (China)--Social conditions--20th century.

Beijing (China).

Recycled products--Government policy.

Social conditions.

China--Beijing.

Physical Description:

xiv, 323 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2021]

Summary:

"Remains of the Everyday traces the changing material culture and industrial ecology of China through the lens of recycling. Over the last century, waste recovery and secondhand goods markets have been integral to Beijing's economic functioning and cultural identity, and acts of recycling have figured centrally in the ideological imagination of modernity and citizenship. On the one hand, the Chinese state has repeatedly promoted acts of voluntary recycling as exemplary of conscientious citizenship. On the other, informal recycling networks-from the night soil carriers of the Republican era to the collectors of plastic and cardboard in Beijing's neighborhoods today-have been represented as undisciplined, polluting, and technologically primitive due to the municipal government's failure to control them. The result, Joshua Goldstein argues, is the repeatedly re-inscribed exclusion of waste workers from formations of modern urban citizenship as well as the intrinsic liminality of recycling itself as an economic process"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

The republican era (1915-49)

Mao era: (1949-80)

The reform era (1980-Present)

Appendix : timelines of selected events in recycling and sanitation bureaucracies, 1949-2000.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Goldstein, Joshua, 1965- Remains of the everyday

ISBN:

9780520299801

0520299809

9780520299818

0520299817

OCLC:

1142915988