Abstract
How does neoliberalism inform the decisions pertaining to work of the catadores (garbage collectors) of Jardim Gramacho, the site that used to be the largest garbage dump in Latin America? How are life and labor intertwined for those who live in the most precarious of social and economic conditions? What constitutes ‘real’ work and, as importantly, what does not? How is the concept of plasticity closely related to the patterns of work undertaken by catadores? These are just some of the fascinating questions raised by Kathleen Millar in her book, Reclaiming the Discarded: Life and Labor on Rio’s Garbage Dump. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the favelas situated on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Millar studies the catadores ‘who collect and sell recyclables on the dump for a living’ (p. 2).
The first chapter introduces readers to the origins of Jardim Gramacho, the site where Millar performed her field research between 2008 and 2009. Millar tactfully teases out the paradoxical tension represented by the garbage dump, which she describes as ‘an ontological experience of labor’ (p. 53). Namely, while it is a site of precariousness as it is replete with certain bodily risks (e.g. physical injury, the acquisition of disease), it concurrently offers agency to those who work on the site (e.g. the opportunity to get paid daily, allows for the customization of schedules based on familial needs). It is, indeed, the often unrecognized benefits provided by this type of work that motivate some of the most disenfranchised subjects of society to be(come) catadores.
Chapters 2–5 present glimpses into the lived realities of catadores. Chapter 2 uses catadores to illuminate how employment in the formal sector is a cultural value, which under certain restrictive circumstances can engender insecurity in other aspects of life. The autonomy provided by work on the landfill serves the dual purpose of creating a source for subsistence and placating the ubiquitous precariousness emanating from their relegation in society. For catadores, as Millar observes, Jardim Gramacho represents a ‘refuge—a place to which they could turn in difficult times and which afford[s] them greater autonomy in their everyday lives’ (p. 71). Chapter 3 examines how the dump transcends its instrumentalist purpose of being a site at which labor is exerted for the exclusive purpose of ascertaining a life of mere subsistence. Millar shows that for catadores, Jardim Gramacho performs not only as a place of work but also as a place at which the complexities of life is lived – at the dump, ‘work is a mean…not an end’ (p. 119). Chapter 4 invokes the concept of plasticity to capture the interplay between the formal and the informal economies as ‘materials [are] moved from the dump to scrapyards and recycling companies’ (p. 127). Finally, Chapter 5 explicates why governmental initiatives aimed at formalizing the work of catadores ultimately fail. As Millar observes, such initiatives congeal a sense of ‘wage-labor job, [predicated on] values of industriousness, punctuality, and propriety’ (p. 166–167) – in short, it pivots on values that would almost wholly excise the autonomy that motivates individuals to become catadores in the first place.
Millar concludes on a poignant note. While it served as both a source of subsistence and a home to myriad catadores, Jardim Gramacho closed in 2012 following 34 years in continuous operation. Some of the catadores who had given much of their lives to the garbage dump had to assume jobs in the formal economy, where getting paid on a regular though intermittent basis (e.g. once a month) leads to a cycle of debt for individuals who had been accustomed to receiving wages daily. Some others were left unemployed and destitute, while longing for the lifestyle and the freedom that working in Jardim Gramacho had once provided.
Reclaiming the Discarded offers rich theoretical and empirical insights into the dynamics of work in the informal sector under the conditions of neoliberal capitalism. Indeed, the labor of catadores in Jardim Gramacho represents how subjects negotiate discursively the work that they do with the detrimental circumstances in which they are situated as a consequent of the neoliberal structuring of society. In offering evocative descriptions of life and labor in Jardim Gramacho, Millar adds to the growing literature on conceptualizing the nature of work as a corollary of the macro patterns of the global political economy. This book would be of much interest to researchers seeking to understand increasingly problematic issues of work, organization, and the construction of marginality among, specifically, communities rendered largely invisible in the Global South.