Ragpicking through time: waste, gender, and modernity in China from the early twentieth century to today

In the face of mounting environmental and social challenges posed by the rapid rise in global municipal solid waste, waste has become an important focus of study in the humanities and social sciences. Scholars specializing in China have contributed to this growing field by exploring how the material, cultural, and social dimensions of waste reveal deeper societal issues in a country that has long served as the world’s dumping ground. This thesis seeks to engage with existing scholarship by presenting perspectives that have been overlooked or insufficiently explored. It begins by situating waste and its broader implications within the historical trajectory of China’s modernization, spanning from the early twentieth century to the present. It then examines how the relationship between waste and modernity is formed through gender, bringing to light voices, identities, and stories that have long been marginalized.

Combining textual analysis with ethnographic research to bring together the everyday narratives and practices of waste over time, this thesis argues that the ambiguity and liminality of waste, both in its materiality and its cultural meanings, make it a site where the fractures of modernity unfold. Using gender as an analytical lens, I show that waste sites are places where gendered oppression and other forms of marginalization are simultaneously reinforced and challenged. Moreover, by exploring how waste evokes the diverse identities, sensory experiences, and forms of mobility that contest established social classifications, my thesis proposes a non-anthropocentric way of imagining and living with waste, aiming to foster more interconnected and inclusive futures—futures that recognize and make space for both human and non-human beings often marginalized in the process of modernization.