Bringing in the Garbage: Opening a Critical Space for Vehicle Disposal Practices

This dissertation examines the relationship among practices and policies of waste/ing and economic structures to make visible the implications of vehicle disposal policies for environmental policy and theory. Consequently, I attempt to build upon the small body of literature that is now critically engaging with waste production and resulting actions/inaction in the form of policies of management. In doing this I use waste as a lens to examine the interrelationships among environmental degradation and economic and political structures. Further, I examine these phenomena in relation to a physical object, the automobile, to add materiality to abstract notions of waste as it relates to both the political and the economic. Through vehicle recycling policies, I analyze how underlying economic structures in contemporary capitalism result in specific responses to the "problems" of waste as well as how the related responses, or "solutions" perpetuate an un-ecological industrial system which severely restricts the possibilities of making substantial change in the production of environmental harms.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph. D.

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Public and International Affairs

Department dc:contributor.department

Public and International Affairs

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Surak, Sarah Marie

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Luke, Timothy W.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• LaBerge, Ann F.
• Hull, Robert Bruce IV
• Fell, Richard D.

• Recycling
• End of Life Vehicle
• Meso-level Analysis
• Extended Producer Responsibility

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Dc Identifier Other

etd-04232012-075944

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/77046