Eva Schwab

This project looks at the framing of waste collection as a practice that belongs (or doesn’t) to ‘the economy’ and ‘the city’ in Serbia since the late socialist period. Focusing on Belgrade, I investigate how the local municipality, recycling industry, and public communal waste service have engaged in discourses of (de-)legitimizing and practices of (de-)regulating waste collection, in relation to notions of ‘productive’ work leading to economic growth. I ask what forms of inclusion are available for populations increasingly labeled as unproductive and not belonging to the city, and how notions of ‘environment’ that gained traction in the field since the 1980s restructure these relations.