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Special issue of Laboratorium. Review of Social Research, a peer-review journalof empirical social research published in hard copy and onlineLanguage: English or RussianContacts: Oksana Parfenova (oksana.parfenova@gmail.com) or Marc Elie (marc.elie@cercec.cnrs.fr)Deadline: 1st December 2011CfP for Laboratorium, Review of Social Research, a peer-review journalof empirical social research published in hard copy and onlineAbstracts accepted until December 1st 2011Sociologists have drawn attention to the paradox that trash, the leastvaluable substance in the value hierarchy of modern societies, isnonetheless crucial to explaining how society works. Refuse diffusesamong societal layers, and how we handle trash reveals importantaspects of the social order.It is often assumed that modern societies created trash as the lastelement of the consumption chain, breaking the traditional circularityof agricultural production. What society rejects is nonetheless orprecisely because of this replete with symbols, values, andideologies. Practices of trash disposing, sorting, collecting, andreusing give insight into belief systems, social hierarchies, classand gender behavior, and many other social phenomena. What are thesocial practices of trash gathering, classifying, reusing, andrecycling throughout history and today? What do they tell us aboutinteractions between people, of the patterns of consumption and of theconception of otherness?In recent years, with the growing pace of industrialization andurbanization around the world, the controversial and problematicaspects of trash have come to the forefront of global politics andscience. As trash is no longer considered an unavoidable consequenceof progress, the management and recycling of industrial and domesticwaste has become not only a pressing technological and logistic issuefor municipalities and states, but a poignant bone of contentionbetween social and economic actors.Waste management – where to locate landfills or build wasteincineration and recycling facilities – is more often than not anissue of environmental justice. How do citizens and public authoritiestackle the trash issue? How is it framed in public discourse by civicassociations, parties, scientists, and officials?With the change of scale of environmental damages, trash andindustrial hazardous materials now travel across natural andadministrative borders. A recent development is the internationaltrash trade: trash is treated as a commodity and shipped from richerto poorer countries (from Western Europe to West Africa, forinstance). But this is not always the case, as the recycling ofnuclear waste in Russia and France shows. What are the economics andpolitics of the globalized waste trade?Laboratorium's special issue on waste and trash welcomes papers insociology, history, political sciences, anthropology, social geographyand other disciplines that can provide insight into social practicesaround waste. Work based on transnational or comparative approaches isespecially welcome.Send abstracts (of no more than 500 words) in one of Laboratorium'sworking languages (English or Russian) to Oksana Parfenova(oksana.parfenova@gmail.com) and Marc Elie (marc.elie@cercec.cnrs.fr)by December 1st 2011.Authors of abstracts selected for publication will be notified byJanuary 15th 2012 and will be expected to submit full-length articles(in one of two languages) no later than June 1st 2012. Laboratoriumwill publish the papers that succeeded in the peer-review process inone of its issues for 2013.