Talk
Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine
Part of "Environment and the Middle East"Monday, February 06, 2023, 6:30PM
NYUAD Campus, Conference Center
Past Event
Open to the Public
Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins traces Palestinians’ experiences of waste to explore what their improvisations for mitigating the effects of what she calls a “waste siege” can tell us about Palestinians’ approaches to time and collectivity today. She describes a series of conditions: from smelling wastes to negotiating military infrastructures, from biopolitical forms of colonial rule to experiences of governmental abandonment, from obvious targets of resistance to confusion over responsibility for the burdensome objects of daily life. Waste siege not only describes a stateless Palestine; it also becomes a metaphor for our besieged planet.
Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins traces Palestinians’ experiences of waste to explore what their improvisations for mitigating the effects of what she calls a “waste siege” can tell us about Palestinians’ approaches to time and collectivity today. She describes a series of conditions: from smelling wastes to negotiating military infrastructures, from biopolitical forms of colonial rule to experiences of governmental abandonment, from obvious targets of resistance to confusion over responsibility for the burdensome objects of daily life. Waste siege not only describes a stateless Palestine; it also becomes a metaphor for our besieged planet.
- Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Director of Anthropology Program and Associate Professor of Anthropology, Bard College