Indeterminacy: waste, value, and the imagination

Introduction : the values of indeterminacy / Catherine Alexander and Andrew Sanchez -- Kept in suspense : the unsettling indeterminacy of U.S. landfills / Joshua O. Reno -- Experiments in living : the value of indeterminacy in trans art / Elena Gonzalez-Polledo -- The production of indeterminacy : on the unforeseeable futures of post-industrial excess / Felix Ringel -- Human waste in the land of abundance : two kinds of gypsy indeterminacy in Norway / Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Cathrine Moe Thorleiffson -- Waste people/value producers : ambiguity, indeterminacy and post-socialist Russian-speaking miners / Eeva Keskula -- Indeterminate classifications : being 'more than kin' in Kazakhstan / Catherine Alexander -- The politics of indeterminacy : boundary dislocations around waste, value and work in Subic Bay (Philippines) / Elisabeth Schober -- Epilogue : indeterminacy between worth and worthlessness / Niko Besnier and Susana Narotzky

Introduction : the values of indeterminacy / Catherine Alexander and Andrew Sanchez -- Kept in suspense : the unsettling indeterminacy of U.S. landfills / Joshua O. Reno -- Experiments in living : the value of indeterminacy in trans art / Elena Gonzalez-Polledo -- The production of indeterminacy : on the unforeseeable futures of post-industrial excess / Felix Ringel -- Human waste in the land of abundance : two kinds of gypsy indeterminacy in Norway / Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Cathrine Moe Thorleiffson -- Waste people/value producers : ambiguity, indeterminacy and post-socialist Russian-speaking miners / Eeva Keskula -- Indeterminate classifications : being 'more than kin' in Kazakhstan / Catherine Alexander -- The politics of indeterminacy : boundary dislocations around waste, value and work in Subic Bay (Philippines) / Elisabeth Schober -- Epilogue : indeterminacy between worth and worthlessness / Niko Besnier and Susana Narotzky

Intro -- Indeterminacy -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Introduction. The Values of Indeterminacy -- Chapter 1. Kept in Suspense -- Chapter 2. Experiments in Living -- Chapter 3. The Production of Indeterminacy -- Chapter 4. Human Waste in the Land of Abundance -- Chapter 5. Waste People/Value Producers -- Chapter 6. Indeterminate Classifications -- Chapter 7. The Politics of Indeterminacy -- Epilogue. Indeterminancy -- Index

What happens to people, places and objects that do not fit the ordering regimes and progressive narratives of modernity? Conventional understandings imply that progress leaves such things behind, and excludes them as though they were valueless waste. This volume uses the concept of indeterminacy to explore how conditions of exclusion and abandonment may give rise to new values, as well as to states of despair and alienation. Drawing upon ethnographic research about a wide variety of contexts, the chapters here explore how indeterminacy is created and experienced in relationship to projects of classification and progress