MCSI Speaker Series: The Idea of Waste

Abstract

As part of the Munro Centre for Social Inquiry (MCSI) 2024 Lecture Series, at Pitzer College, Claremont, California, John Scanlan explores what waste is and why it seems to be intrinsic to human life, at every turn, in every age and epoch.

John Scanlan’s talk starts with the premise that waste is inevitable in human society—and ends with a meditation on its inevitability. The Idea of Waste explores how we have grappled with both the material reality and the specter of this shapeshifting phenomenon throughout history—utilizing it, dreaming of overcoming it, yet never escaping it. Scanlan explores what waste is and why it seems to be intrinsic to human life, at every turn, in every age and epoch. Finally, he demonstrates how waste never disappears, but rather only proliferates anew. Scanlan’s compelling narrative shows waste to be both an enduring material consequence of human activity and an idea or state of being.