Rubbish Theory

Michael Thompson

Description

Rubbish is something we ignore. By definition we discard it, from our lives and our minds, and it remains outside the concerns of conventional economics. However, this book explores the dynamics through which rubbish can re-enter circulation as a prized commodity, in many cases far exceeding its original value. Antiques, vintage cars and period homes, after being discarded as valueless, can, even after many years, become priceless.



First published in 1979, Rubbish Theory has become foundational in its field. Today, it is as relevant as ever. This edition includes a new afterword revealing how the consequences of our compulsion to discard are far from inevitable, and going on to explore how we can transform our troublesome wastes into valuable resources.

Foreword by Joshua O. Reno

Preface

Introduction to the New Edition

1. The Filth in the Way

2. Stevengraphs - Yesterday’s Kitsch

3. Rat-infested Slum or Glorious Heritage?

4. From Things to Ideas

5. A Dynamic Theory of Rubbish

6. Art and the Ends of Economic Activity

7. Monster Conservation

8. The Geometry of Credibility

9. The Geometry of Confidence

10. The Needle’s Eye

Afterword (co-authored by M. Bruce Beck)

Notes

Index

Sujets

• Vente
• Marketing stratégique
• London
• ART
• General
• Business
• World
• Anthropology
• Economics
• General officer
• Consumerism
• Material culture
• Post-war
• Marketing et communication
• Consumer Behavior
• Gestion des ventes

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 juin 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786800978
• Langue: English

Extrait

Rubbish Theory
Rubbish Theory
The Creation and Destruction of Value
NEW EDITION
Michael Thompson
Foreword by Joshua O. Reno
First published 1979; new edition 2017 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright Michael Thompson 1979, 2017
The right of Michael Thompson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 9979 9 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 9978 2 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7868 0096 1 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0098 5 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0097 8 EPUB eBook



This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
Contents
Foreword by Joshua O. Reno
Preface

Introduction to the new edition
1 The filth in the way
2 Stevengraphs-yesterday s kitsch
3 Rat-infested slum or glorious heritage?
4 From things to ideas
5 A dynamic theory of rubbish
6 Art and the ends of economic activity
7 Monster conservation
8 The geometry of credibility
9 The geometry of confidence
10 The needle s eye

Afterword (co-authored by M. Bruce Beck)
Notes
Index
Foreword
Joshua O. Reno


Michael Thompson s Rubbish Theory is not just a book about waste. For one thing, this is the book about waste, arguably the first and best general theory of waste. As such, it is only appropriate that it was relatively neglected and discarded after its limited initial printing, only to be treasured later by those, like myself, who were shocked that it was not more widely known and available. But Rubbish Theory is also not just a book about waste because in it Thompson shows that any adequate account of waste, its role in our lives and worlds, is about so much more than the seemingly insignificant contents of a bin, toilet, dumpster, or landfill.
For scholars within the growing field of discard studies, this reissued and expanded version of Rubbish Theory is a long-awaited gift. Diligent students of discard have been wrestling with this book s profound and provocative arguments for the better part of a decade. And this new version largely resembles the original 1979 one, with the notable exceptions of a new Introduction by Thompson and an Afterword co-authored with M. Bruce Beck. These two new chapters add considerable depth to the book and make it even more rewarding reading for those interested in discard studies and beyond. And yet, when any text is recovered, restored and reissued, like this one, it becomes something more than its actual words, old and new. It is only after an undervalued text has all but vanished that it can be reborn as an irreplaceable fixture of the literary canon (the posthumously revered work of Walter Benjamin or Franz Kafka come to mind). You need to read Thompson s strange and wonderful book to appreciate what makes it worthy of rebirth; but you also need to read it to truly understand what makes such radical value transformations possible in the first place.
If the original Rubbish Theory was deliberately turned into literary rubbish, ironically, Thompson s argument provides the best way to understand what this means. Early on in the book, he explains that no object is fated to remain relegated to a particular category of value. This is without doubt the primary contribution Rubbish Theory has made to discard studies thus far (see, for example, Crang et al, 2012; Evans, 2014; Gabrys, 2011; Hawkins, 2006; Lepawsky and Billah, 2011; Nagle, 2014; O Brien, 2008; Reno, 2009). His examples make clear that value is a mutable social relation and not an inherent characteristic of things themselves. Here Thompson is in agreement with many economic anthropologists, but his argument extends their insights in innovative and unexpected ways.
Most value forms are, in Thompson s words, transient: alienable and temporary. They are not worthless, but they are headed in that direction. They are therefore easier to exchange, dispose of, detach ourselves from. Most things with value have value in this sense, which is in marked contrast with things that are invaluable . When something is treasured for its profound meaning and import, it appears relatively inalienable, durable and permanent. The distinction between transient and durable forms is what makes it absurd to compare the value of a People magazine with Hamlet, an aging Buick Regal with a preserved Model T, a temporary hillside encampment with the city of New Orleans.
As David Graeber (2001) explains, a vast anthropological literature has developed around this tension between distinct levels or spheres of value. According to the more Marxian solution of Munn (1986), Graeber, or Pedersen (2008), the greater the proportion of human labour and imagination, the more durable the value: it takes more collective effort and time to build a city, a monument, a work of art. While persuasive, this approach makes it hard to understand more personal inalienable objects like family heirlooms. Explaining such singular values leads some to adopt a more Durkheimian-Maussian account of values as representations of social histories, memories, and relations. A version of this argument was proposed initially by Annette Weiner (1985) and developed separately by Maurice Godelier (1999) and Roy Rappaport (1999) to link valuable things and sacred values in speculative accounts of the emergence of sociality.
Rubbish Theory has avowedly Durkheimian ambitions. Like the Marxian theorists, however, Thompson recognizes that value forms are not only representations of social relations but help maintain systems of power and hierarchy. As Thompson argues in his new Introduction, rubbish theory is really Cultural Theory, just as the creation and destruction of value is the very stuff of our hopes and dreams, both the forms of life we strive for and those we struggle against. Rather than ask where value comes from in general, Thompson pursues a different problem. If value is mutable and conferred rather than fixed and inherent, then what prevents values from changing? If social conventions disallow certain value transformations, under what circumstances can they occur? It is not just any value change that interests Thompson. The question that he focuses on is the improbable leap from ordinary to extraordinary, from forgettable to eternal. The reason is simple: if it were possible to pass from one stage to the other then that would present the most radical challenge to systems of value and power. Thompson s elegant solution is that value transformations rely upon the possibility of things with zero value, that is, rubbish. By falling into disuse and disregard, a transient object can be one day revalued as a classic, as retro, as kitsch, as an archaeological artifact or relic, as rare and exceptional. Without being removed from value considerations altogether, this sort of radical transformation would not be possible. Rubbish is necessary, therefore, as a result of the seemingly unbridgeable divide between categorical extremes. As a realm outside of formal value assessments, rubbish also provides a creative reservoir of material and social potential, one that can be harnessed to either effect dramatic change or maintain relative stability.
One radical implication of this account is that rubbish, for Thompson, is not simply what is left after value has been depleted. He insists that the contents of a bin or dumpster are not (yet) rubbish. Rather, they are transient, of little value and even less over time. Discards do not become rubbish until social processes and practices conspire to remove them from circulation and consideration. Rubbish is not exactly worthless, for Thompson, it is that which is not even worth assessing in the first place, not consciously labeled as an anti-value, but perhaps semi-consciously ignored as a non-value. This makes rubbish a valueless limbo (Hawkins, 2006:78) betwixt and between the overt, acknowledged categories of transient and durable.
While some take issue with this definition of rubbish (Lucas, 2002; Hetherington, 2004), it solves a number of dilemmas that emerge from the social creation of value. If human imagination and labour are so potent, why don t value transformations happen all the time? When such transformations routinely occur, as happens on dumps and among scavengers the world over, then how are rigid hierarchies of wealth and power maintained? The answer lies in the controls that various elites and sub-groups place on value transfers. In forms of life more dedicated to hierarchy, for instance, it will be more critical to disallow access to rubbish, to police acts of radical value creation by means of authority and violence (Hill, 2001; Millar, 2008). Within forms of life that are more egalitarian, by contrast, forms of rubbish revaluation will proliferate and destabilize the formation of durable values, which has been documented among anarchist and activist collectives (Liboiron, 2012; Giles, 2014). Here Thompson s debt to his mentor Mary Douglas is particularly evident. Like Douglas, Thompson associates radical possibilities with materials that have exited our purview altogether, which surprisingly or embarrassingly reappear where they do not belong. Douglas saw dirt, the absence or flaw in any pattern, as the very stuff of change and transformation.
For Martin O Brien (2008:136-9), Thompson s argument puts Douglas more idealist conception of dirt to work to explore concrete moments of value creation and destruction. One could summarize Thompson s basic ins