Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine

Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins traces Palestinians’ experiences of waste to explore what their improvisations for mitigating the effects of what she calls a “waste siege” can tell us about Palestinians’ approaches to time and collectivity today. She describes a series of conditions: from smelling wastes to negotiating military infrastructures, from biopolitical forms of colonial rule to experiences of governmental abandonment, from obvious targets of resistance to confusion over responsibility for the burdensome objects of daily life. Waste siege not only describes a stateless Palestine; it also becomes a metaphor for our besieged planet. Speakers Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Director of Anthropology Program and Associate Professor of Anthropology, Bard College