Garbage Collectors in Peri Urban China -- From an Environmental Health Perspective

Content introduction：

About the Talk

This article explores health, disease and social status of garbage collectors in Guiyang. Drawing on a one month ethnographic fieldwork, it expands the study of science by examining in what ways garbage collectors understand waste picking, pollution and the associated risks and diseases that they contract through exposure to the wastes; and how far the garbage collectors’ voices and their day-to-day realities and struggles were integrated to the process of policy making. It shows that a large number of garbage collectors, together with other rural-urban migrants in medium and small cities, are struggling for survival, which results in an extremely low health standard, the ignorance to environmental risks and the high resistance to minor diseases. The central argument of this study is that risk, health and disease are not simple scientific terms; they have a socio-economic and a cultural dimension that cannot be separated. All these factors are intrinsically intertwined and shape the wellbeing of people. In contemporary China, the identity of garbage collectors is blurred and they are economically and culturally marginalized and subordinated. Garbage collectors become the most invisible group in China’s development process. They are far left behind in the process of development and modernization.

About the Speaker

Yang Lichao is an assistant professor in the School of Social Development and Public Policy at Beijing Normal University. Her research interests include gender and development, women's studies, environmental health, and sustainable development. Yang received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Australian National University.