The Anthropology Speaker Series presents
After the Flush: Rethinking the Future of Human Waste
by
Nick C. Kawa
Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Ohio State University
with
Liliana Gil
Associate Professor in the the Department of Comparative Studies at the Ohio State University
What happens when the modern toilet goes flush? Where does this waste go and what eventually becomes of it? Who is responsible for its management and who is implicated in its afterlives? And is it all just waste or might it be something more?
This talk, based on Kawa’s forthcoming book of the same title, draws on long-term ethnographic research in the American Midwest to investigate these questions. Specifically, he shows how sewage sludge (now known as “biosolids”) has been increasingly adopted as a resource for the fertilization of industrial farm fields, urban gardens, ecological restoration sites, and private golf courses. By accompanying the work of wastewater treatment operators and other experts, he also highlights the challenges this system poses, from unwanted odors and nagging social stigmas to emerging contaminants present in the municipal waste stream. To conclude, Kawa invites consideration of more radical alternative approaches to sanitation and ways of relating to bodily excess in these times of intertwining economic and ecological crisis.
*for assistance accessing this event, contact Dr. Erin Moore