| Popis: |
What can a political economy of waste demonstrate about contemporary Palestine? With Oslo Palestinian refuse came to be defined as the de facto property of the would-be Palestinian state. The PA authorized itself to become the sole actor in charge of defining, valuing, and arranging waste in space. The PA achieved this through centralization of waste disposal in two regional, PA-run landfills beginning in 2007 and through the subsequent closure of hundreds of municipal dumpsites across the West Bank. This dramatically raised disposal costs to municipalities. Refuse became a financial burden that each garbage-producing individual, business, or locality was expected to pay. This essay focuses on the technique the PA deployed to extract payment for waste services from residents: it connected waste management fees to prepaid electricity meters being installed across the territory. I draw on long-term fieldwork in Palestine beginning in 2007 to explore how the decision to connect waste fees to prepaid electricity meters was made thinkable and practicable. Through automation of waste fee payment, the relationship between Palestinian governance and its subjects was rearranged. I argue that connection of waste fees to prepaid electricity meters transformed the mediating role of waste in the relationship between residents and municipal service. It rendered the municipality a more extractive and simultaneously less intimate actor in residents’ lives. It served to separate residents from their waste and made their refuse both more public and less polysemic. |
