This book uncovers, explores and analyses the cultural and social factors and values that lie behind waste making, recycling and disposal in the Asia Pacific region, where impressive economic growth has led to significant increases in production, consumption and concomitant waste production. This volume demonstrates the immense scope of waste as a multi-sectoral phenomenon, covering discussions on food, menstrual products, sewage, electronics, scrap, nuclear waste, plastics, and even entire villages as they are submerged underwater by dam building, considered expendable in favour of economic growth. It discusses the wide range of approaches and contexts through which people interact with waste, including socio-economic analysis, participatory observation, laboratory science, art, video, installations, literature and photography. Case studies focusing on India, China and Japan, in addition to other regional examples, demonstrate the ubiquity of waste, materially and geographically. It examines the duality of waste management, fostering community building while simultaneously excluding marginalised groups; how it can be linked to efforts creating circular economies, to then reappear in oceanic garbage patches; or technical waste repurposed for high-tech laboratory research before being discarded once again. This timely and wide-ranging collection of essays will be an important read for scholars, researchers and students in sustainability, development studies, discard studies, and social and cultural history, particularly focusing on countries in the Asia-Pacific.

This collection of essays brings together discussions arguing that the circular economy must be linked to society and culture in order to create a viable concept for remodelling the economy. Covering a diverse range of topics and regions, including cities and living, food and human waste, packaging and law, fashion, design and art, this book provides a multi-layered examination of circularity. Transitioning to a circular economy, reducing resource input and waste, and narrowing material and energy loops are becoming an increasingly important targets to combat decades of unsustainable models of consumption. However, they will require a significant shift in social and cultural thinking and these dimensions have not yet been factored into policy debates and frameworks. While recognising the key role of individual consumers and their behaviours, the book goes beyond this singular perspective to provide equal focus on institutional and political structures as necessary drivers for real change. Social and Cultural Aspects of the Circular Economy argues for a social and solidarity economy (SSE) to combine individual actions with a wider cultural shift. It will be an important read for scholars, researchers, students and policy-makers in the circular economy, waste studies, consumption and other environmentally focused social sciences.

This book explains how and why the state-socialist regime in Hungary used technology and propaganda to foster industrialization and the conservation of natural resources simultaneously. Further, this book explains why this process was ultimately a failure. By exploring the environmental pre-history of communist Hungary before analyzing the economic development of the Kadar regime, Pal investigates how economic and environmental policies and technology transfer were negotiated between the official communist ideology and the global economic reality of capitalist markets. Pal argues that the modernization project of the Kadar regime (1956-1990) facilitated ecological consciousness - at both an individual and societal level - which provoked great social unrest when positive environmental impact was not achieved. Today, global issues of climate change, urban pollution, resource depletion, and overpopulation transcend political systems, but economic and environmental discourses varied greatly in the twentieth century. This volume is important reading for all those interested in economic and environmental history, as well as political science.

Since the early 2000s, authoritarianism has risen as an increasingly powerful global phenomenon. This shift has not only social and political implications, but also environmental implications: authoritarian leaders seek to recast the relationship between society and the government in every aspect of public life, including environmental policy. When historians of technology or the environment have investigated the environmental consequences of authoritarian regimes, they have frequently argued that authoritarian regimes have been unable to produce positive environmental results or adjust successfully to global structural change, if they have shown any concern for the environment at all. Put another way, the scholarly consensus holds that authoritarian regimes on both the left and the right generally have demonstrated an anti-environmentalist bias, and when opposed by environmentalist social movements, have succeeded in silencing those voices. This book explores the theme of environmental politics and authoritarian regimes on both the right and the left. The authors argue that in instances when environmentalist policies offer the possibility of bolstering a country's domestic (nationalist) appeal or its international prestige, authoritarian regimes can endorse and have endorsed environmental protective measures. The collection of essays analyzes environmentalist initiatives pursued by authoritarian regimes, and provides explanations for both the successes and failures of such regimes, looking at a range of case studies from a number of countries, including Brazil, China, Poland, and Zimbabwe. The volume contributes to the scholarly debate about the social and political preconditions necessary for effective environmental protection. This book will be of great interest to those studying environmental history and politics, environmental humanities, ecology, and geography.

Since the early 2000s, authoritarianism has risen as an increasingly powerful global phenomenon. This shift has not only social and political implications, but also environmental implications: authoritarian leaders seek to recast the relationship between society and the government in every aspect of public life, including environmental policy. When historians of technology or the environment have investigated the environmental consequences of authoritarian regimes, they have frequently argued that authoritarian regimes have been unable to produce positive environmental results or adjust successfully to global structural change, if they have shown any concern for the environment at all. Put another way, the scholarly consensus holds that authoritarian regimes on both the left and the right generally have demonstrated an anti-environmentalist bias, and when opposed by environmentalist social movements, have succeeded in silencing those voices. This book explores the theme of environmental politics and authoritarian regimes on both the right and the left. The authors argue that in instances when environmentalist policies offer the possibility of bolstering a country's domestic (nationalist) appeal or its international prestige, authoritarian regimes can endorse and have endorsed environmental protective measures. The collection of essays analyzes environmentalist initiatives pursued by authoritarian regimes, and provides explanations for both the successes and failures of such regimes, looking at a range of case studies from a number of countries, including Brazil, China, Poland, and Zimbabwe. The volume contributes to the scholarly debate about the social and political preconditions necessary for effective environmental protection. This book will be of great interest to those studying environmental history and politics, environmental humanities, ecology, and geography.

This book explains how and why the state-socialist regime in Hungary used technology and propaganda to foster industrialization and the conservation of natural resources simultaneously. Further, this book explains why this process was ultimately a failure. By exploring the environmental pre-history of communist Hungary before analyzing the economic development of the Kadar regime, Pal investigates how economic and environmental policies and technology transfer were negotiated between the official communist ideology and the global economic reality of capitalist markets. Pal argues that the modernization project of the Kadar regime (1956-1990) facilitated ecological consciousness - at both an individual and societal level - which provoked great social unrest when positive environmental impact was not achieved. Today, global issues of climate change, urban pollution, resource depletion, and overpopulation transcend political systems, but economic and environmental discourses varied greatly in the twentieth century. This volume is important reading for all those interested in economic and environmental history, as well as political science.

Finland has often been labelled a 'green superpower', lauded as one of the world's cleanest and greenest countries. Nordic countries in general have tended to be idealised as 'pristine and green', in contrast to the rest of the rapidly contaminating world where the race for markets and profits has enormously accelerated consumption, imposing on the environment an alarming level of extraction and commerce, and a wide array of new and old forms of pollution. Environmental historians, however, can perceive that the reputed 'greenness' of the Nordic countries is partly an illusion. Authors in this volume argue that Finland, similarly to Denmark, Norway and Sweden, has evolved into a green superpower at the cost of considerable environmental problems. Ironically, Finland's current leading position in sustainable development has been built on the heavy use of natural resources and by sacrificing ecosystem health. This volume thus seeks to acquaint the reader with many stories of long-lasting negative environmental impacts in and around Finland: old-growth forests have been replaced by intensive forest farming for lumber and pulp industries; most wetlands have been drained for agriculture, forest cultivation and peat extraction; wild animal populations have been decimated; and Finland today is confined to the south and west by arguably the most polluted sea in the world. There are lessons for the future to be learnt from Finland's tendency to rest on the laurels of a positive environmental reputation built at least in part on myth. In the twenty-first century, the world badly needs less greenwashing and a truer commitment to green-ness.