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Complications and Complexities: Reflections on Twentieth-Century European Recycling

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2013

SUSAN STRASSER
SUSAN STRASSER*
Affiliation:
University of Delaware, Department of History, 229 John Munroe Hall, Newark, DE 19716, USA; [email protected]
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Abstract

This article offers reflections on the scholarship in the special issue. It proposes that the formation of an overall narrative of twentieth-century European recycling is a complex matter, depending on issues of gender, age, class, nationality and representation. It suggests the further complications of writing histories of everyday life, points out the various meanings of ‘recycling’ and interrogates waste as an element of consumer culture.

Complications et complexités: réflexions sur le recyclage en europe au 20e siècle

Cet article propose des réflexions sur les recherches qui sous-tendent cette édition spéciale. Il avance que la genèse d'une narration globale du recyclage en Europe au 20e siècle est un sujet complexe, fonction de questions de genre, d'âge, de classe, de nationalité et de représentation. Il suggère les complications supplémentaires inhérentes à l'historiographie de la vie quotidienne, pointe les différentes significations du terme ‘recyclage’ et s'interroge sur les déchets en tant qu'élément de la culture de consommation.

Komplikationen und komplexitäten: überlegungen zum recycling im europa des 20. jahrhunderts

Dieser Beitrag stellt einige Überlegungen zu den Forschungsarbeiten in der Sonderausgabe an. Die Autorin weist darauf hin, dass eine historische Gesamtdarstellung zum Recycling im Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts eine komplexe Angelegenheit ist und von Aspekten wie Geschlecht, Alter, sozialer Schicht, Nationalität und politischen Einflussmöglichkeiten abhängt. Er zeigt weitere Komplikationen in Bezug auf die wissenschaftliche Darstellung des Alltagslebens auf, verweist auf verschiedene Bedeutungen des Begriffs ‘Recycling’ und untersucht Abfall als Element der Verbraucherkultur.

Type
Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 22 , Issue 3: Recycling and Reuse in the Twentieth Century , August 2013 , pp. 517 - 526
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

1 Chad Denton, ‘“Récupérez!” The German Origins of French Wartime Salvage Drives, 1939–1945’, in this issue, 405.

2 Finn Arne Jørgensen, ‘Green Citizenship at the Recycling Junction: Consumers and Infrastructures for the Recycling of Packaging in Twentieth-Century Norway’, in this issue, 503.

3 For the American version of this set of developments, see Zimring, Carl, Cash for your Trash: Scrap Recycling in America (Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 83–6Google Scholar.

4 Jørgensen, ‘Green Citizenship’, 503.

5 Ruth Oldenziel and Milena Veenis, ‘The Glass Recycling Containers in the Netherlands: Symbol in Times of Scarcity and Abundance, 1939–1978’, in this issue, 469.

6 Andrea Westermann, ‘When Consumer Citizens Spoke Up: West Germany's Early Dealings with Plastic Waste’, in this issue.

7 Heike Weber, ‘Towards “Total” Recycling: Women, Waste and Food Waste Recovery in Germany, 1914–1939’, in this issue, 372.

8 Denton, ‘Récupérez!’, 407.

9 Ibid.

10 Ruth Oldenziel and Heike Weber, ‘Reconsidering Recycling’, introduction to this special issue, 349.

11 Strasser, Susan, Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999), 10Google Scholar.

12 Peter Thorsheim, ‘Salvage and Destruction: The Recycling of Books and Manuscripts in Great Britain during the Second World War’, in this issue, 438.

13 Oldenziel and Veenis, ‘Glass Recycling Container’, 459.

14 See Strasser, Waste and Want, 6–8.

15 Heike Weber, ‘Towards “Total” Recycling’, 383.

16 Denton, ‘Récupérez!’, 411.

17 Thorsheim, ‘Salvage and Destruction’, 433.

18 Jørgensen, ‘Green citizenship’, 506.

19 Jørgensen, ‘Green citizenship’, 504.

20 Westermann, ‘Consumer Citizens’, 488.

21 Oldenziel and Weber, ‘Reconsidering Recycling’, 358.