Abstract

"The number of tonnes of electric and electronic waste increases tremendously every single year. Mechanisms, infrastructures and policies are slow to respond to the growing size of the problem. The global focus on addressing this issue is on high-technological solutions. However, these ambitious solutions are expensive and slow to tackle the speed of accumulating e-waste, especially in developing countries. The much desired and advocated circular economy has vividly failed to contain e-waste, and it offers loopholes that lead to the export of e-waste from developed to developing countries. However, in developing countries, like Tanzania, people encounter and interact with e-waste in very ingenious and innovative ways. Currently, there is little recognition of their contribution to e-waste solutions, and the forces of capitalism push them and their practices to the margins. Nevertheless, scattered, uncoordinated e-waste practices offer coherence and networks of e-waste-human entanglements that produce new ways of value and life. 

In this talk, I explore the practices of ingenuity that arise upon encounters with e-waste in Dar es salaam barrios and which allow the extraction of value from defunct electronic materials. To do so, I present my journey following electronic objects in the city’s landscapes and the innovative practices surround the ways these objects materialise into new lives. Moving from households through scavenging heaps, I describe the methods through which hand workers transform e-waste into new objects, and how, through their use, these items emerge and sustain innovative cultural and economic forms in urban Tanzania. In doing so, I link these socio-material transformations and the innovative practices through which they emerge to consider how the temporality of e-waste is negotiated and re-articulated to create new forms of value."

All are welcome to attend, even without RSVP. However, if you would like a free sandwich, please email ceh@cas.au.dk and indicate any special dietary needs before 12pm on Monday, March 30.