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- Title
Zopilotes, Alacranes, y Hormigas (Vultures, Scorpions, and Ants): Animal Metaphors as Organizational Politics in a Nicaraguan Garbage Crisis.
- Authors
Nading, Alex M.; Fisher, Josh
- Abstract
Abstract: While scholars frequently frame conflicts over urban waste in terms of a politics of infrastructure, this article frames such conflicts in terms of a politics of organization. In 2008, self‐employed recyclers in and around Managua, Nicaragua blockaded local dumps in an effort to secure rights to scavenge for resellable material. Over the course of this “garbage crisis”, a material and semiotic entanglement of human labor organization with animal ecology became politically salient. At different points, recyclers were compared to ants (hormigas), vultures (zopilotes), and scorpions (alacranes). State officials, NGOs, and recyclers themselves used these animal metaphors to describe the organization of waste collection. Drawing on theories of value from political ecology and economic anthropology, as well as analysis of the deployment of these “organic” metaphors, we outline an “organizational politics” of urban waste.
- Subjects
NICARAGUA; OFFICE politics; POLITICAL ecology; RECYCLING &; politics; INFRASTRUCTURE (Economics); METAPHOR; ECOLOGY
- Publication
Antipode, 2018, Vol 50, Issue 4, p997
- ISSN
0066-4812
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/anti.12376