Waste work and the dialectics of precarity in urban Ghana: durable bodies and disposable things

What can the dialectics of waste work tell us about the urban underclass in the flux of late capitalism? What might waste reveal more broadly about the contradictions and uncharted possibilities of material accumulation in urban Africa? Utilizing a relational optic, these issues are explored from the perspective of young men working in the rubbish dumps of Ghana's ‘edge city’ of Ashaiman, a space where the detritus of local and global markets and struggles for urban survival converge. Here, day-to-day entanglements with city dwellers’ discarded items muddy the expected terms of economic dispossession and attainment. At Ashaiman's dump, the perils of social and bodily breakdown are matched by the promise of expanded reproduction via waste work, invigorating the economic prospects of the region's footloose underemployed. Relevant well beyond Ghana, such inversions point to an insistent underside of late-capitalist overproduction: namely, in this dense space of discard and decay, those on the lowest rungs of the urban economic ladder meld bodily expenditure, social aspiration and material breakdown to forge fragile futures and to format urban space. Blending materialisms new and old, a view from Ashaiman's dump bridges the insights of relational ontologies focused on the agency of things and labour-based renderings of capitalism's transformation.

Standing (K)in

This chapter draws on an analytical framework of “relatedness” to illustrate the everyday attachments—the kinships, friendships, and sexual partnerships—of the Point Place youth. To convey the fluidity of these relationships, the chapter refers to the idiom of ukuma, which in isiZulu means “to stand.” The youth's various enactments of ukuma speak to the hierarchies of urban survival as well as to the commensalities. The chapter reveals the practices of solidarity that maintain the Point Place youth on a day-to-day basis. With ukuma at the forefront of its investigations, it shows how the youth negotiate their standing in society precisely through their relationships with one another.

Songbird perception and production in anthropogenic noise

Urban habitats are characterized by a number of unique environmental variables, including modified vegetative structure, fragmentation, small patch size, invasive species, and higher levels of anthropogenic noise. Many songbird species are found less frequently in these types of habitats, but this pattern is far from universal. This has led many to ask whether common urban species are more adaptable in novel environments, or whether this subset of species has been pre-adapted for urban survival. Much of my own research has been geared towards understanding the effects of anthropogenic noise on songbirds and determining which, if any, song traits facilitate higher urban persistence. However, perception of bird sounds is only a small piece of the soundscape a songbird must navigate. Other sounds, such as predator calls, may also be hampered by anthropogenic noise. Yet, less is known about how noise effects communication networks beyond the sender-receiver relationship. I will present results from a series of experiments designed to examine whether pitch and temporal plasticity can be utilized by songbirds to adapt to high levels of noise, then turn my attention towards perception, examining whether urban songbirds can perceive an aerial predator in the midst of increased noise. Finally, I ask whether we can manipulated natural behavior patterns to increase songbird diversity despite the apparent disparity in some traits between species which inhabit urban areas and those that do not.

Songbird perception and production in anthropogenic noise

Urban habitats are characterized by a number of unique environmental variables, including modified vegetative structure, fragmentation, small patch size, invasive species, and higher levels of anthropogenic noise. Many songbird species are found less frequently in these types of habitats, but this pattern is far from universal. This has led many to ask whether common urban species are more adaptable in novel environments, or whether this subset of species has been pre-adapted for urban survival. Much of my own research has been geared towards understanding the effects of anthropogenic noise on songbirds and determining which, if any, song traits facilitate higher urban persistence. However, perception of bird sounds is only a small piece of the soundscape a songbird must navigate. Other sounds, such as predator calls, may also be hampered by anthropogenic noise. Yet, less is known about how noise effects communication networks beyond the sender-receiver relationship. I will present results from a series of experiments designed to examine whether pitch and temporal plasticity can be utilized by songbirds to adapt to high levels of noise, then turn my attention towards perception, examining whether urban songbirds can perceive an aerial predator in the midst of increased noise. Finally, I ask whether we can manipulated natural behavior patterns to increase songbird diversity despite the apparent disparity in some traits between species which inhabit urban areas and those that do not.

Urban agriculture in Santarém, Pará, Brazil: diversity and circulation of cultivated plants in urban homegardens

Urban agriculture, including urban homegardens, is vital for urban survival of many people in various cities around the world, including those in the Amazon region of Brazil. These spaces, through daily praxis, become important for incidental agrodiversity conservation as food plants are cultivated and their plant material circulated. Utilizing data from a year-long intensive qualitative study of 25 rural-urban migrant households, this article considers the diversity of plant material in urban homegardens in the Amazonian city of Santarém, Pará, Brazil. The purpose of the study was to understand the social systems that maintain cultivated plant diversity in homegardens. Our objectives in this article are twofold: a) to demonstrate that plant agrodiversity in homegardens persists in a setting which is located 'at the market'; and b) to document the ways in which flows of plant material help maintain this agrodiversity.