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Waste management: The Other of production, distribution, and consumption

Corvellec, Hervé LU orcid (2016) p.107-114
Abstract
Italian novelist Italo Calvino ([1972] 1974: 102–103) described Leonia as a city where ‘every morning the people wake between fresh sheets, wash with just-unwrapped cakes of soap, wear brand-new clothing, take from the latest model refrigerator still unopened tins, listening to the last-minute jingles from the most up-to-date radio’. This opulent newness is dependent upon garbage trucks collecting the remains of Yesterday’s Leonia every morning and driving it outside the city, where ‘the outflow increases and the piles rise higher, become stratified, extend over a wider perimeter’. Leonia is actually surrounded by waste, and ‘[p]erhaps the whole world, beyond Leonia’s boundaries, is covered by craters of rubbish, each surrounding a... (More)
Italian novelist Italo Calvino ([1972] 1974: 102–103) described Leonia as a city where ‘every morning the people wake between fresh sheets, wash with just-unwrapped cakes of soap, wear brand-new clothing, take from the latest model refrigerator still unopened tins, listening to the last-minute jingles from the most up-to-date radio’. This opulent newness is dependent upon garbage trucks collecting the remains of Yesterday’s Leonia every morning and driving it outside the city, where ‘the outflow increases and the piles rise higher, become stratified, extend over a wider perimeter’. Leonia is actually surrounded by waste, and ‘[p]erhaps the whole world, beyond Leonia’s boundaries, is covered by craters of rubbish, each surrounding a metropolis in constant eruption’. The higher the pile of rubbish that surrounds Leonia, the more the danger of a landslide looms: a tin can, an old tire, an unraveled wine flask, if it rolls toward Leonia, is enough to bring with it an avalanche of unmated shoes, calendars of bygone years, withered flowers, submerging the city in its own past, which it had tried in vain to reject, mingling with the past of the neighboring cities, finally clean. Calvino insinuated that waste waits, patiently. However, waste is already amongst us, calling into question the current institutional order of an endlessly growing linear flow of production → distribution → consumption. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
organization
publishing date
type
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
publication status
published
subject
host publication
A Research Agenda for Management and Organization Studies
editor
Czarniawska, Barbara
pages
107 - 114
publisher
Edward Elgar Publishing
external identifiers
  • scopus:85015014672
ISBN
9781784717018
DOI
10.4337/9781784717025.00016
project
Frikopplingstjänster Nya managementpraktiker för en ny socio-materialitet av avfall
From waste management to waste prevention. Closing implementation gaps through sustainable action nets
Organizing critical infrastructure services-The case of Waste Management
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
16ffb63d-cdeb-452c-9533-2ad93a8118b9
date added to LUP
2016-04-29 14:01:19
date last changed
2022-12-21 18:16:19
@inbook{16ffb63d-cdeb-452c-9533-2ad93a8118b9,
  abstract     = {{Italian novelist Italo Calvino ([1972] 1974: 102–103) described Leonia as a city where ‘every morning the people wake between fresh sheets, wash with just-unwrapped cakes of soap, wear brand-new clothing, take from the latest model refrigerator still unopened tins, listening to the last-minute jingles from the most up-to-date radio’. This opulent newness is dependent upon garbage trucks collecting the remains of Yesterday’s Leonia every morning and driving it outside the city, where ‘the outflow increases and the piles rise higher, become stratified, extend over a wider perimeter’. Leonia is actually surrounded by waste, and ‘[p]erhaps the whole world, beyond Leonia’s boundaries, is covered by craters of rubbish, each surrounding a metropolis in constant eruption’. The higher the pile of rubbish that surrounds Leonia, the more the danger of a landslide looms: a tin can, an old tire, an unraveled wine flask, if it rolls toward Leonia, is enough to bring with it an avalanche of unmated shoes, calendars of bygone years, withered flowers, submerging the city in its own past, which it had tried in vain to reject, mingling with the past of the neighboring cities, finally clean. Calvino insinuated that waste waits, patiently. However, waste is already amongst us, calling into question the current institutional order of an endlessly growing linear flow of production → distribution → consumption.}},
  author       = {{Corvellec, Hervé}},
  booktitle    = {{A Research Agenda for Management and Organization Studies}},
  editor       = {{Czarniawska, Barbara}},
  isbn         = {{9781784717018}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{107--114}},
  publisher    = {{Edward Elgar Publishing}},
  title        = {{Waste management: The Other of production, distribution, and consumption}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781784717025.00016}},
  doi          = {{10.4337/9781784717025.00016}},
  year         = {{2016}},
}