Notes for an Anthropology of Plastics - Magdalena Crăciun
Nowadays fossil-based plastics are ubiquitous. They are in our clothes, buildings, cars, and roads. Accumulations of very small pieces of plastics, called micro-plastics and nano-plastics, are present everywhere in nature and various organisms, including humans, with effects whose gravity we are only now beginning to understand. In addition, fossil-based plastics are almost indestructible, being considered the “new immortals,” next to other man-made materials such as cement or radioactive waste. Then, in our “plasticized” world, how do we relate to plastics and how do we learn to approach its dangerous and almost eternal presence? These are some of the questions of an anthropology of plastics that is now beginning to emerge in the academia. A possible answer, based on ongoing ethnographic research, starts from the notion of “regime of value” proposed by the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai. Since their entry into Romanian homes, timidly in the years after the Second World War, and then more and more frequently, plastics have been understood and experienced through different symbolic and economic regimes of value. Currently, various regimes co-exist, the most recent ones recasting the value of plastics in both positive and negative terms.Read by actress Katia Pascariu , with an illustration by Daia - Diana Grigorehttps://theanthro.art/notes-for-an-anthropology-of-plastics/