Guidelines for Visual Essays, Waste Art, Residua, Reviews and Reappraisals, and Residua

As well as peer reviewed original research articles, Worldwide Waste has introduced several new categories of editor-reviewed submission.

Proposals for all these categories should be addressed to the editor and deputy editor before submission.

Visual essays: 4–10 images with accompanying text (maximum 2,000 words) that form a narrative focused on those living with, transforming, managing or struggling against waste.  

Waste art: 1,000–2,000 word essays that critically engage with cultural productions using or representing waste (broadly conceived).

Waste art can be broadly defined as aesthetic (or anti-aesthetic) cultural productions that incorporate rejected, expelled, discarded or otherwise devalued objects, substances and bodies. The term itself appears contradictory as 'waste' can connote rejection, filth, disorder and lack of value; while 'art' can connote beauty, order, cleanliness and transcendent value. This contradiction can make waste art provocative and politically charged. For this submission category, we are especially interested in essays that highlight how particular examples of waste art challenge or reproduce narratives and open new imaginaries. 

Residua: 1,500–3,000 word essays highlighting practices that diverge from or transgress the logics of systems reliant on discard and disposability. 

Residua are the persistent remainders from emissions, effluents, byproducts and leftovers of production and consumption. This concept can also encompass the everyday practices that align with such material remains in ways that subtly diverge from or transgress the logics of systems reliant on discard and disposability. For this submission category, we seek short form essays that dwell on residua to explore directions for a critical waste studies that attends closely to materialities, affects, intimacies and other easily overlooked minutiae.

Reviews and Reappraisals: 1,000–2,000 word reviews of recent books, films or exhibitions (or reappraisals of how less recent waste-related works and cultural productions resonate today).

Book reviews and reappraisals for Worldwide Waste must offer a thorough, clear and accessible review of the main argument/s of the text, its position within relevant scholarly traditions, literature or phenomena, and provide insight into its contribution to the field. The review should also offer critical consideration of how the text meets its stated aims.

Worldwide Waste invites reviews and reappraisals of scholarly texts that relate to the journal aims and scope, as well as fictional texts, films/documentaries, exhibitions and poetry. 

One aim of Worldwide Waste reviews and reappraisals is to increase exposure to and engagement with the social sciences and the humanities. As such, please write your review with a wide audience in mind. Your audience should encompass students at various levels of study, academics, policymakers, journalists and members of the public.

Authors have 90 days to complete their reviews and reappraisals. Should this timeframe be unachievable, please contact the book review editors at your earliest convenience.

General guidelines for all editor-reviewed submission categories include:

1. Style and formatting should adhere to the author guidelines for Worldwide Waste, with a preference for MS Word documents for ease of editing.
2. Provide a reference list for any cited material (included in the word count) in line with the standard author guidelines for submissions to Worldwide Waste.

Submissions should include a biographical note of no more than  two or three sentences, with your title and affiliation.