Global Garbage examines the ways in which garbage, in its diverse forms, is being produced, managed, experienced, imagined, circulated, concealed, and aestheticized in contemporary urban environments and across different creative and cultural practices. The book explores the increasingly complex relationship between globalization and garbage in locations such as Beirut, Detroit, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Manchester, Naples, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Tehran. In particular, the book examines how, and under what conditions, contemporary imaginaries of excess, waste, and abandonment perpetuate - but also sometimes counter - the imbalances of power that are frequently associated with the global metropolitan condition. This interdisciplinary collection will appeal to the fields of anthropology, architecture, film and media studies, geography, urban studies, sociology, and cultural analysis.

Christoph Lindner is Professor of Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam.

Miriam Meissner is Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Lancaster University.

1. Global Garbage, Urban Imaginaries PART I: Waste 2. Trashtopia: Global Garbage/Art in Francisco de Pájaro and Daniel Canogar 3. Dirty Familiars: Colonial Encounters in African Cities 4. Waste Not, Want Not: Garbage and the Philosopher of the Dump (Waste Land and Estamira) 5. The Paradox of Waste: Rio de Janeiro's Praça XV Flea Market 6. Waste Streams and Garbage Publics in Los Angeles and Detroit PART II: Excess 7. Leftover Space, Invisibility and Everyday Life: Rooftops in Iran 8. Writing Rubbish About Naples: the Global Media, Post-politics and the Garbage Crisis of an (Extra-)Ordinary City 9. Dirt Poor/Filthy Rich: Urban Garbage from Radiant City to Abstention 10. Under the Spectacle: Viewing Trash in the Streets of Central, Hong Kong PART III: Abandonment 11. Geospatial Detritus: Mapping Urban Abandonment 12. Waste and Value in Urban Transformation: Reflections on a Post-Industrial 'Wasteland' in Manchester 13. On Beckton Alp: Iain Sinclair, Garbage and 'Obscenery' 14. Disposable Architecture - Reinterpreting Ruins in the Age of Globalization: the Case of Beirut