Countercycling : an ethnographic study of waste, recycling, and waste-pickers in Curitiba, Brazil (original) (raw)

This thesis is a sociological investigation on the recycling of urban waste. It is based on fieldwork carried out in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The author used a combination of interviews, analyses of quantitative data, and participant observation to understand the work and modes of organisation of informal collectors of recyclables in this city. Curitiba is known in Brazil as the “first-world capital” and, in the world of urban planning, as a “model city” or an “ecological capital city”. These encomiums result in part from Curitiba’s ground-breaking recycling campaigns and systems of waste collection, sorting, and commercialisation. However, the city’s model image hides an army of urban poor and circuits of informal transactions that actually do most of the recycling work. These informal infrastructures are mostly responsible for the city’s official recycling rates, which are comparable to those of the most recycle-minded European cities. The main objective of this research pr...