Dr Joshua Reno PhD

Josh Reno is a socio-cultural anthropologist, primarily interested in the intersections between environmental issues and science and technology. He conducted his doctoral fieldwork on transnational waste circulation and mega-landfills in North America. His dissertation explores the political economy of waste circulation, its transformation of landscapes, lives and communities in rural Michigan, and its relationship to environmental politics and neoliberalism. From 2008-2010 he conducted fieldwork in the UK, studying emerging European technologies in the fields of health and the environment, their innovation, contestation and governance. He has authored articles on the environment, science and technology, language and communication, and material culture and is the co-editor, with Catherine Alexander, of Recycling Economies, expected in 2012 from Zed Books. He trained in Anthropology at the University of Michigan, where he received his PhD in 2008.

Teaching

Dr Josh Reno co-convenes the MA in Applied Anthropology, Community and Youth Work, and convenes the BA Anthropology and Sociology

He teaches the following courses:

• Anthropology Today
• Anthropology of Rights
• Contemporary Social Issues
• Methodological and Philosophical Issues in Anthropology and Sociology

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 on global carbon accounting policy, expertise and technology.

Further information

Selected publications