Europe’s Disappearing Waste

Unanticipated Conflicts between Removal and Greening

Daniel Sosna

214 pages, 20 illus., bibliog., index

ISBN 978-1-83695-551-1 Hb Published (July 2026)

web ISBN 978-1-83695-553-5

Details

“This is an engaging account of landfill workers and others employed in waste disposal in Czechia …Sosna provides an honest and at times touching account of how waste is entangled in diverse social relations.” • Daniel Knight, University of St. Andrews

Through ethnographic research conducted among landfill workers and waste pickers, Europe’s Disappearing Waste explores the inner workings of the Czech waste management system that is underpinned by the belief that waste should disappear. Waste streams give rise to underflows that provide opportunities for those who refuse to be passive witnesses of disposal and loss of value. The normative assumptions about market-based solutions and techno-optimism in waste management are called into question, directing attention to the commitment to salvage that provides an alternative way of relating to waste.

Daniel Sosna is a researcher and the deputy director of the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. He is, together with L. Brunclikova, a co-editor of Archaeologies of Waste (Oxbow, 2017), and, with C. Alexander, of Thrift and Its Paradoxes (Berghahn, 2022).