'Written with a clear and convincing prose, this book makes a major contribution to and advances waste studies, environmental studies, and the anthropology of infrastructure by updating our extant theories of labor, the economy, and the commons. This book will not only serve as a useful teaching resource but also as a model for future scholars'
Zsuzsa Gill, Professor of Sociology and Director of Global Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
'Activist scholarship of the highest calibre. This is an intimate, humorous and razor-sharp analysis of the politics of urban waste. O'Hare mounts a passionate defence of waste as commons, in the face of corporate and state initiatives to reconfigure waste as resource'
Penny Harvey, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester
'A compelling ethnography of Uruguayan waste pickers. This important intervention asks who has the economic and moral right to the surplus and excess that drive capitalism. As O'Hare shows, the waste pickers lay claim to this resource as part of a dialogue with environmental and social justice, through practices of care and commoning'
Catherine Alexander, Department of Anthropology, University of Durham