Gathering Electronic Waste in Tanzania - by Samwel Moses Ntapanta (Hardcover)

About the Book

Using Tanzania as a case study, this book traces the lifecycle of electronic goods beyond their discard in the Global South to provide a deeper understanding of the informal sector's vital role in rethinking global discard circulations, labour, value, and toxicity.

Book Synopsis

Using Tanzania as a case study, this book traces the lifecycle of electronic goods beyond their discard in the Global South to provide a deeper understanding of the informal sector's vital role in rethinking global discard circulations, labour, value, and toxicity.

Review Quotes

Grounded in long cooperation, mutual curiosity, and friendship, Ntapanta follows Tanzanians living and working with the detritus of global techno-consumerism?gathering discarded electrical appliances, extracting metals, and forging utensils from apparent waste in central Dar es Salaam. Avoiding the external observerrsquo;s facile dystopianism, he provides the reader glimpses of urban everyday life in the lsquo;downstreamrsquo; regions of post-imperial techno-capitalism. Drawing on readings from Marx and thinkers of the Dar es Salaam school to contemporary anthropological theory, Ntapanta reconsiders seemingly marginal economic practices?eking out lives from residues at the end of the value chain?as central to century-long processes of value (re-)generation, extraction, and accumulation.

About the Author

Samwel Moses Ntapanta is post-doctorate research fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Aarhus University.