About the Journal

Worldwide Waste is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal presenting innovative research on waste from around the world. It provides the first scholarly platform for open-access scholarship that critically interrogates the cultural, social, economic and political systems within which waste is created, managed and circulated. Since discards vary in their materialities and meanings across time and space, research on waste needs to develop critical insights through empirical investigation of local contexts – attending to the theories, politics, histories or philosophies of waste as opposed to straightforward empirical studies of waste production or management, per se. Devoted to scholarship, the journal privileges no particular theories, debates or trends. Its goal is to actively stimulate publications of innovative scholarship on relatively unexplored topics and/or from geographical areas that have thus far been underrepresented in waste studies. The scope of Worldwide Waste is not restricted to the present, but welcomes contributions from scholars investigating historical aspects of human relationships with waste. Submissions are encouraged from across the humanities and social sciences, including anthropology, archaeology, ecology, geography, politics, sociology, and science and technology studies. Submissions are also welcomed from disciplines in which waste-related research is currently less prominently represented, such as literature, philosophy, and the visual and performing arts.

Please note that for all articles published on this site, the PDF galleys are the version of record.  We also make XML galleys available for convenience but cannot guarantee that the display of the XML versions is flawless.