Conference Agenda

A film by urban geographer Rosalind Fredricks, THE WASTE COMMONS reveals the intricate lifeworlds and recycling networks built by waste pickers since 1968 at Dakar’s dump, Mbeubeuss. Adja and Zidane, two waste pickers who are emerging as leaders contesting the erasure of their community, guide us through the dump’s material, social, and spiritual worlds. Adja is a divorced mother from Dakar specializing in plastics. Zidane, who hails from the country’s interior, supports his two families through sales of used shoes. They represent the central demographics at the dump– the urban poor rendered superfluous to the city’s growth engines and the rural poor fleeing collapsing agricultural economies bearing the brunt of climate change. Both are finding their voice in arguing for their rights to waste within the tense negotiations surrounding the future of their very way of life.