Waste: Postgraduate Interdisciplinary Conference
Bradley Forum, Level 5, Hawke Building, University of SA (City West Campus)
8-10 December, 2014
Conference Keynote Speakers:
- Honorary Associate Professor Paul Brown, University of New South Wales
- Dr William Viney, Durham University, UK
- Other speakers TBC
What is waste? Who defines waste? Why are we afraid of waste? How do we manage waste? We’d rather not think about it. It evokes shame and revulsion; it implies excess or inefficiency. But in an overpopulated world, waste is an increasing concern. This conference takes an interdisciplinary approach to the theme of waste to understand how we repress, confront, deny, define, fear and are fascinated by waste. From anthropological papers dealing with taboos and transgressions, historical investigations into who or what has counted as waste, literary analyses of ruins and decadence to urban planning and sociology papers on modern slums and disposable populations, we invite postgraduate students to consider how their research relates to waste. Who decides what is waste and how do we do it? Is your work a waste of tax-payers? money? What are the cultural, social and economic factors that prevent us from dealing with waste?
We welcome academic papers, journalism and artistic works in any medium from postgraduates across Australia on the topic of waste, especially in relation to the following themes:
- Global inequality and waste
- Time-wasting and creativity
- Taboos around defilement, pollution and waste
- Wasted potential and/or opportunities
- The relationship between productivity and waste
- Political, sociological, historical, cultural or psychological analyses of attitudes to waste
- Remnants, remainders, recycling
- Cultural or artistic depictions or analyses of wastelands/ruins
- Sustainability and waste
- Urban wastelands/empty or negative space
- Historical, sociological or political analyses of definitions of waste
- How cultures of disposability shape attitudes to waste
- The relation between the useful and the superfluous, the sacred and abject
- Entropy
- Disposable/superfluous populations and human waste
- Climate change and waste
- Colonialism and waste
- Managing waste
Papers should be no longer than twenty minutes in duration. Artistic works, installations, performances and so forth should indicate spatial/equipment requirements and duration. Acceptance of artworks will depend on spatial availability. There is a strong possibility of post-conference publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and can be submitted to: wasteconference2014@unisa.edu.au by Friday 5 September 2014.
For more information on this conference, please visit the website: unisa.edu.au/wasteconference2014.
