From the Cult of Waste to the Trash Heap of History: The Politics of Waste in Socialist and Postsocialist Hungary

by Zsuzsa Gille

Zsuzsa Gille combines social history, cultural analysis, and environmental sociology to advance a long overdue social theory of waste in this study of waste management, Hungarian state socialism, and post–Cold War capitalism. From 1948 to the end of the Soviet period, Hungary developed a cult of waste that valued reuse and recycling. With privatization the old environmentally beneficial, though not flawless, waste regime was eliminated, and dumping and waste incineration were again promoted. Gille's analysis focuses on the struggle between a Budapest-based chemical company and the small rural village that became its toxic dump site.

Genres: Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

i LOVE books about waste, though, so maybe my opinion is skewed. for anth 250x communism/postcommunism

[Artie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very very nice and just not my thing. It is impeccably researched though, she really did that. Waste as a frame for socialist failures and western dominance? Definitely an interesting perspective, just not one I care too much about.

[Jack Roberge · Rating 3 out of 5]

immeasurably dense but very well researched.

[Lukáš · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe that if I ever spoke with the author face-to-face, there would be probably quite a few misunderstandings before we properly connected. To put it differently, this is an excellent book, but my concern is that it does only partly realize the potential of the questions it opens with. To put it more clearly - the idea and general observation that the whole 'empty container' of the concept of 'waste' is a terribly clumsy and poorly understood concept that not only can provide an additional critical standpoint from which to take a look at economic processes is simply brilliant. And this is accompanied by another interesting assertion - that here we have something that at the same time is not a merely semantic category, precisely because waste is absolutely material. Brilliant also. The problem (even though, some of the social scientific disciplines might not share this view, which is, precisely, that with which I started) is that this is (through moves that one would really have to appreciate otherwise) subsequently transposed into an overtly contingecy-driven [because, I assert that the concept of contingency is the real politicial problem that the current disciplinary basis of social sciences as such can handle only quite poorly], empirical approach. It shows how during the Communist and post-Communist eras in Hungary, narratives / symbolizations of waste shifted and with them also the political-economic regimes, leading to different pathologies through which the materiality of waste 'bited' back on the cultural semantics. Through this, the book provides also a quite challenging view back upon the policies of integrating Hungary into the European Union marked by a different political economy of waste, raising concerns about a kind of 'waste imperialism' that reveals gaps and democratic deficits in the EU. However, this is (to me) only after the book has lost a good part of its critical potential and thus remains somehow impotent. GR doesn't allow for half-stars, otherwise it'd be 3.5/5.