A one-day workshop from 9am to 5pm, on June 14th 2010
To be held at the Pearson North Lecture Theatre, University College London

Waste is a valuable, yet often little understood, resource that may be used to subvert and reconfigure moral, legal, social and political boundaries in the pursuit of livelihoods and business success. Textile recyclers have developed a range of socio-technological practises to enable material transformations to take place that often remain invisible to those studying modern economies. This one-day interdisciplinary workshop brings together researchers working on textile recycling across disciplines and sectors, including anthropologists, geographers, historians, designers, waste consultants and consumer researchers. Through this exchange we hope to develop a greater understanding of the underlying relationships between people and things, raw materials and technologies, the emergence of entrepreneurs and innovators in social networks, and their contextual variations. For further details, please see the Call for Papers.

Participants:

• Beverly Lemire, University of Alberta, Canada
• Olumide Abimbola, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany
• Karen Tranberg Hansen, Northwestern University, USA
• B. Lynne Milgram, Ontario College of Art and Design, Canada
• Julie Botticello, UCL, United Kingdom
• Ingun Grimstad Klepp, Tone Skardal Tobiasson, Charlotte Bik Bandlien and Kirsi Laitala, SIFO (NICE), Norway
• Nicholas Morley, Oakdene Hollins, United Kingdom
• Pammi Sinha and Kanchana Dissanayake, University of Manchester, United Kingdom
• Lucy Norris, UCL, United Kingdom

Organisers:
Lucy Norris and Julie Botticello, Dept of Anthropology, UCL

Registration:
The registration fee covers refreshments and lunch with vegetarian options.
Waged: £25 and Unwaged: £18

Please contact Julie Botticello on ucsajboucl.ac.uk to reserve your place. The deadline for registration is 7th of June 2010.

Programme:

  9.40 – 10.00     Registration & Coffee (in the North Cloisters)

10.00 – 10.10     Welcome: Danny Miller; Introduction: Lucy Norris and Julie Botticello

Session 1: Building networks and breaking boundaries

Chair: Danny Miller

10.10 – 10.40     Beverly Lemire, Textile Networks and Textile Meanings: the European Secondhand Trade in Historical Perspective, c. 1600-1850

10.40 – 11.10     Julie Botticello, Negotiating Status and Value: Processing Rags for Global Export.

11.10 – 11.40     Lynne Milgram, Mobilizing Livelihood, Centering Margins: Women and the Transnational Hong-Kong Philippine Used Clothing Trade

11.40 – 12.00     Coffee Break (in the North Cloisters)

Chair: Nicky Gregson

12.00 – 12.30     Karen Tranberg Hansen, From Family Business to International Empire: Global Networks in Secondhand Clothing Trading

12.30 –   1.00     Olumide Abimbola, Igbo Trade Networks and Secondhand Clothing

  1.00 –   1.15     Discussion

  1.15 –   2.00     Lunch (in the North Cloisters)

Session 2: The return of recycling technologies

Chair: Dinah Eastop

  2.00 –   2.30     Ingun Grimstad Klepp, Tone Skardal Tobiasson, Charlotte Bik Bandlien, Reinventing Old Solutions t0 New Problems?

  2.30 –   3.00     Nick Morley, Pulp Fiction? Re-innovating Paper Manufacture from Textiles

  3.15 –   3.30     Coffee Break (in the North Cloisters)

Chair: Susanne Küchler

  3.30 –   4.00     Pammi Sinha, Kanchana Dissanayake, Local Knowledge and Skills in Remanufacturing Fashion

  4.00 –   4.30     Lucy Norris, Remains or Resource? Alternative perspectives on dirt and the success of used clothing transformations in India.

  4.30 –   5.00     Final discussion

Check out the Journal of Material Culture for their contribution to the workshop. The event is taking place as part of the Waste of the World programme funded by the Economic and Social Research Council

Source: UCL Department of Anthropology