Waste Work: Grounding Race, Caste, and Labour in the New Global Politics of Disposability

Speakers:
Josh Lepawsky, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Vinay Gidwani, University of Minnesota Twin Cities

Abstract:
As global waste continues to grow at an unprecedented rate, questions of labour, inequality and environmental governance have become increasingly urgent. The Waste-Work Symposium, organized by Shubhra Gururani and Harsha Anantharaman at the York Centre for Asian Research, brings together leading scholars and practitioners to examine how waste economies reshape social and political life across the Global South and North.

The opening keynote by Josh Lepawsky, titled Delete/Ignore: What Counts as Waste and Work in the New Global Politics of Disposability, interrogates how waste is defined, governed and unevenly distributed, and how these processes are tied to global systems of value and disposability.

The closing keynote by Vinay Gidwani, titled Waste Work as Infrastructural Labour Amidst the Ruins of Accumulation, explores waste work as a critical yet often invisible form of labour that sustains contemporary political economies, while also revealing the social and environmental contradictions of accumulation.

Together, these talks foreground how waste work is deeply entangled with questions of race, caste, labour and inequality, challenging dominant narratives of sustainability and “circular economy” solutions.

Dates and Location:
Opening Keynote: April 10 | 9:30 a.m. (Friday)
Closing Keynote: April 11 | 9:30 a.m. (Saturday)
Room 280N York Lanes (2nd Floor)
Keele Campus, York University

Registration:
The keynote lectures are open to the public, but registration is required. Please register here: https://1011042026.eventbrite.ca