Waste/Wasted Heritage and heritage for sustainability

While a conventional spatial understanding of the relationship between waste and heritage tends to place one in opposition to the other (for example the contrast between the museum and the rubbish dump as end points in the life cycle of redundant objects), the aim of this cross-cluster theme is to explore the more complicated understandings of objects, places, practices and values that cut across these two categories and to consider how such explorations might illuminate new ways of understanding the role of heritage in the Anthropocene and lead to new, cross-cluster collaborations on issues of contemporary global concern. We envisage exploring these questions as they apply to processes across various scales and in different settings, ranging from the minute and domestic to the largescale and public.

The Waste/Wasted Heritage theme provides a forum for critical debate and discussion among CCHS researchers, and through events involving national and international partners. Research that examines the relationship between heritage and sustainability is multidisciplinary and has a range of interpretations and applications across disciplinary fields and public policy.