Wandering Islands¹: towards an archaeology of garbage-based settlements

ABSTRACT

The growing rate of global inequality, on the one hand, and hyper-consumerism, particularly among higher socio-economic classes in developed countries, on the other, have resulted in the emergence of new forms of subsistence, lifestyles and settlement types where subaltern groups and populations live and work. This paper investigates the emergence of two of these kinds of settlement in Tehran, Iran, that have developed based on the intersection of two factors: garbage and undocumented migration. In these places, undocumented Afghan migrants sort and sell dry garbage. At the same time, these places shelter the workers, chiefly teenage and underage undocumented Afghan migrants. This paper is a preliminary effort to archaeologically categorize and conceptualize these garbage-based settlements. Archaeology is among the best methodologies to investigate the materiality and inequality faced by such transient subaltern groups in the short and long term. Here I discuss how several factors, beyond absolute poverty, participate in turning garbage into a livelihood and generate garbage-based settlements.

KEYWORDS:

• Inequality
• garbage
• gowd
• garage
• undocumented Afghan migrants

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Sepideh Salarvand and Aidin Halalzadeh for sharing with me their photos and film, the Lowland, about Afghan waste-pickers. Sepideh, arrested and sent to Evin Prison for two weeks during the current demonstrations, is one of the handful researchers who have devoted her professional life to the deprived, particularly child labourers. My special thanks goes to Leila Papoli-Yazdi for her insight into Afghan young garbage collectors. Eventually, I wish to thank the editors of the World Archaeology, Sarah Semple and Rui Gomes Coelho, who went patiently through the text and the reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions to improving the quality of my work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. A novel by the Iranian modern novelist Simin Daneshvar (1921–2012).

2. 99 years is a metaphor for a long and everlasting period in Persian.

3. The dialogue is from the documentary film Lowland by Aidin Halalzadeh and Sepideh Salarvand (https://www.tiwall.com/p/documantary.god).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maryam Dezhamkhooy

Maryam Dezhamkhooy is a former assistant professor for archaeology and Alexander von Humboldt fellow. She is now the affiliated researcher at the Käthe Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-apocalyptic Studies, where she is conducting research on waste, and women’s movement in the recent past Iran. She is a specialist in the archaeology of the contemporary past. Gender, conflict, colonialism, nationalism, and waste and garbage communities are her main research interests. She is a member of European Association of Archaeologists. Interested in gender and sexuality, she is also a member of AGE, archaeology and gender in Europe. Her works have been mostly published in scholarly anthropological and archaeological journals, such as Archaeologies, International Journal of Historical Archaeology, World Archaeology, Archaeologies and Sexuality & Culture or as chapters in edited volumes. She is a member of the working group Gap End, Iranian engaged archaeologists. Her works on gender in Sasanian Iran can be cited as pioneer work in Iranian archaeology. Her last publication, with Leila Papoli-Yazdi, is a monograph on gender entitled Homogenization, Gender and Everyday Life in Pre- and Trans-modern Iran: An Archaeological Reading. Profile of Maryam Dezhamkhooy on CAPAS: https://www.capas.uni-heidelberg.de/maryam_dezhamkhooy.html. Profile of Maryam Dezhamkhooy on Academia: https://independent.academia.edu/maryamdezhamkhooy. Profile of Maryam Dezhamkhooy on Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=fkxULAkAAAAJ&hl=en. Profile of Maryam Dezhamkhooy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MrymShyrazy.