Vol. 9 (2026)
Waste Ethnographies

Between Value and Waste: An Ethnography of Language, Classification and Buddhist Modernity in a Bhutanese Village

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  • Dendup Chophel
Dendup Chophel
University of Copenhagen
Cover image of Worldwide Waste journal, showing a derelict car on a grassy sward.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3197/whpww.63857928646683

Published 2026-09-21

Keywords

  • Wasted lives,
  • metaphors,
  • speech acts,
  • moral-political waste,
  • excess,
  • Buddhist modernity
    • ...More
    Less

How to Cite

Chophel, D. (2026). Between Value and Waste: An Ethnography of Language, Classification and Buddhist Modernity in a Bhutanese Village. Worldwide Waste, 9, 26–39. https://doi.org/10.3197/whpww.63857928646683

Copyright (c) 2026 Dendup Chophel

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This article examines how waste functions as a material, moral and social category in a historically marginal Bhutanese village, where Buddhist modernism has generated social disorientation and new imaginaries of waste. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and informed by the semantic approaches of Discard Studies and Bauman’s (2004) conceptualisation of ‘wasted lives’, the article explores how ritual abundance, debt-fuelled generosity and competitive merit-making produce not only material residues but also generative imaginaries of wasted lives and moral excess. Through denotative speech acts and connotative vernacular metaphors of waste – such as rgyu ’phro brlag btang (use wealth wastefully) and mi tshe bar stong (an emptied life) – villagers moralise imbalance, diagnose disorder and navigate the tensions between devotion, obligation and sustainability. By tracing these waste metaphors and speech acts, the article advances Discard Studies into the semantic and moral economies of contemporary Buddhism, revealing how language mediates hierarchy, value and transformation.

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