{"title":"Visualizing Agbogbloshie and Re-envisioning E-Waste Anthropology","authors":"P. Little","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190934545.003.0006","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 5 engages a critical discussion of the visual economy of e-waste ruination in Agbogbloshie. It explores how, through ethnographic research in general and participatory photography in particular, images make meaning and shape e-waste imaginations. Circulating e-waste images of Agbogbloshie, the author argues, expose the power and utility of e-pyropolitical imagery to make, tell, and even distort and mystify life in Ghana’s e-wasteland. The chapter interrogates the e-pyropolitical gaze conditioning how digital rubble and toxic colonialism are seen. Countering the e-waste “crisis of representation” in Agbogbloshie, the author considers the possible role of participatory photography as an alternative technique of e-waste visualization, in addition to considering the ways in which these worker-based forms of witnessing e-waste can help justify and provide a methodological grounding for the very decolonization of e-waste studies in Ghana in particular.","PeriodicalId":331037,"journal":{"name":"Burning Matters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Burning Matters","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190934545.003.0006","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Chapter 5 engages a critical discussion of the visual economy of e-waste ruination in Agbogbloshie. It explores how, through ethnographic research in general and participatory photography in particular, images make meaning and shape e-waste imaginations. Circulating e-waste images of Agbogbloshie, the author argues, expose the power and utility of e-pyropolitical imagery to make, tell, and even distort and mystify life in Ghana’s e-wasteland. The chapter interrogates the e-pyropolitical gaze conditioning how digital rubble and toxic colonialism are seen. Countering the e-waste “crisis of representation” in Agbogbloshie, the author considers the possible role of participatory photography as an alternative technique of e-waste visualization, in addition to considering the ways in which these worker-based forms of witnessing e-waste can help justify and provide a methodological grounding for the very decolonization of e-waste studies in Ghana in particular.