The Fourth World Congress of Environmental History
We are seeking participants who run or lead group projects (workshops, special issues, collected papers, museum collaborations, etc.) on or related to the broadly defined topic of bodily waste and value. We invite them to present their collective projects (10 min presentations) and contribute to a discussion of theoretical frameworks explored in the different fields of scholarship and the synergies which can emerge through viewing them in close proximity.
The 105-min. roundtable will take place as part of the 4th World Congress of Environmental History, which will be held at the University of Oulu, Finland 19-23 August, 2024. Number of participants: up to 5. Submissions are submitted through the following link: https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/wceh2024/p/13627#
Keywords: bodily waste; emotions; materiality; infrastructure; politics; capitalism
Panel organizers: Tamar Novick (MPIWG), Maria Pirogovskaya (MPIWG), and Simon Werrett (UCL)
Roundtable Abstract
The roundtable focuses on examining the meanings and uses of substances that exit or originate from the hum/animal bodies across time and space. It uses bodily waste to think with and to examine the contingency of the body and its integrity, the configurations of waste and the ecologies in which bodily waste emerges, exists, and functions, and more broadly, the intricate and shifting relation between materials and value. By looking at bodily waste through diverse disciplinary perspectives, chronologies, and language traditions, this roundtable will offer new methodological approaches into the study of materials, their use, and their meaning in specific environments.
We will pay special attention to how the waste-and-value relationship has manifested itself within and shaped environmental regimes. By so doing, this roundtable contributes new insights not only to environmental history stricto senso but also to the fields of the history of the body (how do the boundaries of the body get defined and reestablished, and what representations and beliefs these reflect), discard studies (when and in what circumstances do substances become materials or waste, and whether waste is merely a “matter out of place”), and the history of science (how materials and their changing value shape knowledge and scientific work, and when do they become or cease being resources or their potentialities get enacted).
Considered together, contributors to the roundtable will open up a discussion on how bodily substances and waste materials are foundational to the construction of regimes of value.
For any questions, please contact Tamar Novick at tnovick@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de or Maria Pirogovskaya at mpirogovskaya@mpiwg-berin.mpg.de