Trash Transformations: Litter, Volunteer Labour, and Care in Philadelphia

Abstract

This article examines anti-litter labour in Philadelphia as a site of political possibility. Drawing on four years of ethnographic fieldwork conducted with a grassroots anti-litter group, I argue that embodied spatial practices at the organisation's clean-ups produce lived and imagined images of a more just urban landscape. These imperfect and impermanent images illuminate the possibilities and challenges of transforming landscapes of uneven disinvestment through acts of radical care.