Talking Trash – a New York IRL on Stooping, Scavenging, and Gleaning
Saturday June 24 at 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm EDT
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Free
Stooping, scavenging, or gleaning are all ways to describe the process of salvaging or reusing what others throw away. Join Columbia Professor @anniepfeifer to explore both the ancient roots and contemporary environmental implications of these do-it-yourself practices of waste management.
Stooping, scavenging, or gleaning are all ways to describe the process of salvaging or reusing what others throw away. Join Columbia Professor @anniepfeifer to explore both the ancient roots and contemporary environmental implications of these do-it-yourself practices of waste management.
Today’s urban stoopers and scavengers are the descendants of agricultural gleaners who collected leftover crops from farmers’ fields after they were harvested. An important but overlooked force in the agricultural economy since early antiquity, gleaning is also a form of social activism. As God’s instructions to Moses in Leviticus suggests, gleaning was a biblically sanctioned social welfare practice to provide for the poor: “Thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest . . . neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger.”
Now, in the context of global waste and resource crises, gleaning functions as a kind of do-it-yourself practice of waste management. Not only does mechanical harvesting miss a lot of crops, farmers sometimes produce more than they can use or sell. According to The Economist, some 20–40 percent of fruit and vegetables are rejected by American and British supermarkets on purely cosmetic grounds. Few gleaners live on the food they glean, most pursue it consciously as a form of social activism to protest against consumer culture and environmental destruction.
While the roots of gleaning lie in the agricultural realm, its practices can help us re-imagine the way we deal with waste in the cultural realm. In her 2001 film, The Gleaners and I (Les glaneurs et la glaneuse), the legendary late French filmmaker Agnès Varda redefines “gleaner” as anyone who thrives off something others leave behind. The practice of gleaning—whether food-related or artistic—encourages us to use and reuse more consciously and creatively.
We will discuss
When should we throw away food?
How do municipal laws regulate certain practices of waste disposal?
How can we think more creatively about waste on a cultural or artistic level?
What are the political implications of scavenging or gleaning?
How can waste management help us live more sustainably?
