Waste and Wealth

Waste and Wealth examines questions of value, labor, and morality underlining the translocal waste networks in Spring District, Vietnam. Engaging with waste as an economic category of global significance, this book provides an account of migrant laborers' complex negotiations with political economic forces to build their economic, social, and moral life from their marginalized position. It thereby makes visible how women and men seek to construct viable identities and meaningful lives in the face of stigmatization, insecurity, and precarity. It makes an important contribution to global studies of informalized economies and post-socialist transformations, adding to knowledge about how the forces of globalization blend with local historical-cultural dynamics to shape economic and moral lives.