Waste is one of the most complex, contested, and charged objects we humans encounter in our daily lives. It contains narratives of decay and declension, of pollution and toxicity, of resurrection and recovery, and also, of violence and inequality. Waste is ubiquitous - we cannot avoid running into it one way or another, no matter how hard we try to move waste objects out of sight, to bury and burn them, to dispose of, discard or destroy them. Everything is waste and waste is everywhere.

The DFG Heisenberg Professorship concerns itself with different historical avenues into the waste world, among them the global waste economy  ( The Toxic Ship, 2023), Times of Toxics and Toxic Commons.

Book Reviews:

Review by Adam M. Romero

American Historical Review December 2024 by Emily Brownell

For the communities along the Yukon River, one of North America’s largest watershed regions, the past few years have brought enormous uncertainty. In addition to the rapidly changing, fragile ecosystems of the North Pacific and the North American Arctic with their thawing permafrost, it is particularly the collapse of salmon populations in the Yukon River that poses existential challenges for communities in the border region between the U.S. and Canada. Yet an international agreement to stabilize fish stocks, ratified by the U.S. and Canada more than 20 years ago, was actually intended to prevent a collapse of the stocks and ensure subsistence fishing.

This research project traces the early phase of the demarcation of the border between Alaska and the Yukon Territory in the late 1890s, focusing on the problems and contradictions of government action. How is the presence of state institutions legitimized in the first place? What are the specific political and environmental difficulties that shape patterns of state oversight? What role do non-human entities such as fish or viruses play in these processes; and what influence do these entities have on territorial demarcation, the practice of territorialization, imperial rule, and their fragility? Building on the dissertation, the project examines the ways in which state actors and institutions sought to exert their influence over and exploit the resources of the (sub-) Arctic riverlands, yet often found themselves forced to acknowledge the failure of their own projects.