Goldsmiths - University of London

Dr Joshua Reno PhD

Research interests

North America/Europe, political ecology, science and technology studies, climate change, environmental justice, disability studies

My diverse research interests are linked by a fascination with materials and devices that become sites of social controversy and creativity, particularly those technologies, both wondrous and humble, which are designed to cope with waste, climate change, disease and disability. Most of my research has focused on ‘mass waste’, a particular material associated with liberal governance and the systematic redistribution of effluent for the sake of health and order.  I have explored mass waste as both a market product and a political technique: first, the controversial growth of landfills and trans-boundary waste trafficking in the Great Lakes region of North America and, more recently, the techno-politics of transforming waste into a sustainable resource and solution to climate change in the UK.  

I am also interested in semiotics, psychological anthropology, the social study of disability and the problem of agency, and am planning a future research project examining carbon accounting mechanisms and the production of environmental knowledge in North America.

Selected Publications

Under Revision. “Technically Human: On Equipping Apes, ‘Aliens’ and Internet Bots to Use Language.” Submitted to American Anthropologist.  

2011. “Motivated Markets: Clean Energy, Social Payments and Tradable Green Certificates.” Accepted by Cultural Anthropology.

2010. “Managing the Experience of Evidence: England’s Experimental Waste Technologies and their (Im)modest Witnesses.” Accepted by Science, Technology and Human Values.

2009. “Your Trash is Someone’s Treasure: the Politics of Value at a Michigan Landfill.” Journal of Material Culture 14(1): 29-46.

Further information