Grounding Waste: Towards a Sociology of Waste Networks

Abstract

This article contributes towards building a sociology of waste. It advances a network analysis framework to understand the position and role of the various actors involved in waste governance in Ireland, North and South. It is the state at the EU and national levels that has sought to deal with waste within the competing sustainability and competitiveness paradigms. However, this article also argues for the critical importance of ‘glocal’ action around waste management (incinerators in particular) in developing a sociology of waste. The issue of waste is seen in parallel terms to that of money as a new global fluid, which, nevertheless, needs to be governed. A major argument of the article is that we need to take a grounded globalisation approach to build insights into networks of waste and networked political processes of waste governance.