An embodied urban political ecology of women recyclers’ work in the ‘clean city’

Keywords: Urban Political Ecology, Waste Management, Urban Governance, Informal Recycling, Women, Embodiment, India
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 22

Abstract

This presentation will investigate the impacts that recent multi-scalar efforts to ‘clean up’ city streets in urban India have for those who rely on accessing waste materials on the streets for their livelihoods. I draw upon twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork and an iterative series of interviews and group discussions with low-income women recyclers in Ahmedabad, India between 2016-2018 to explore women’s navigations of a suite of recent shifts in the ideas, governance mechanisms, and practices of managing solid waste and cleaning up public spaces in the city. I use a feminist, embodied Urban Political Ecology (UPE) approach to highlight the intersectional and embodied gendered nature of Ahmedabad’s shifting urban waste landscape. I argue that class-biased pursuits and imaginaries of ‘clean and green’ world-class cities and ‘modern’ forms of solid waste management intersect and compound in recyclers’ everyday lives as waste work is increasingly mechanized and masculinized.

Study findings demonstrate that material and discursive cleanliness governance projects entrench and reproduce insecurities of gender, caste, class, and labour for marginalized urban workers; increase spatial, temporal, and social barriers to women recyclers’ livelihoods; and have important implications for informing local pandemic crisis response and recovery as policymakers and planners attempt to sanitize and revitalize urban spaces and service delivery through ‘smart’ technological interventions and the designation of ‘essential’ waste workers. This presentation promotes the importance of embodied and gendered analyses of urban natures, emphasizing women recyclers knowledges, bodies, and labour as essential in the production and visioning of the city.