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David O Reynolds 

Singapore  Singapore
dr.do.reynolds@gmail.com

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5554
Singapore  Singapore
dr.do.reynolds@gmail.com

Personal Information

Additional Information

Postdoctoral Fellow
Higher education institution
Full time
National University Singapore
Yes
Yes
No
Full-time PhD student
The material politics of plastic: living differently for the future
People who avoid plastic at the household level in Australia
The presence of plastic materials is emerging as a problem for human and non-human life as part of an environmental crisis with massive spatial and temporal scales. This thesis explores the experiences, activities and perspectives of people who avoid plastic materials in urban Australia. I draw on ideas from new materialism and assemblage theory to reveal effort, affect and care as defining features of a ‘material politics of plastic’. This research contributes to understanding the exercise of agency with political purpose at the household level and the work of reconfiguring human relations with influential materials within broader assemblages. The research opens up the enactment of political responses to materials through mundane practices, and care and ethical aspiration as political forces. The research also explores how and why households innovate to intervene in environmental crises.
I use data from qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 36 people who identified themselves as ‘avoiding plastic’ to build an account of the material politics of plastic. I asked these people about avoiding plastics - what they are doing, why, and the contexts of their actions. Participants shared their expertise and experiences of exercising agency with political purpose in response to plastic materials, revealing a novel form of politics. It is enacted through directed and consistent effort, is affective and disruptive, and sees agency exercised with and through care. This politics is experienced as hard work, an ethical and gendered endeavour entangled with intimate social relations and culinary practices in the household, and a tangible point of intervention in environmental crises. People who avoid plastic are innovative pioneers at the household level. Larger-scale responses to plastic materials, in the kinds of public policy, systemic and large-scale change that are needed, can build on and support their novel politics.

Thematic Groups

Crime & Governance
Cultural Sociology
Environment & Society
Media

Biography

Dr Reynolds is a sociologist interested in waste, plastics and food, how these are shaped by care and processes of politicisation, particularly in relation to sustainability. His PhD thesis in Human Geography (Monash University, Melbourne) investigated the experiences, practices and perspectives of people who avoid using plastic materials in their households in Australia. His MA in Sociology (Otago University, Aotearoa/New Zealand) investigated expert perceptions of food insecurity in Aotearoa/New Zealand and examined food insecurity in this food-rich country in relation to neoliberalism. He has published peer-reviewed articles and book chapters about contemporary food and waste issues.


His current research at ARI investigates the household consumption and disposal of plastic materials, and the social, historical and digital practices that shape women’s household management of plastic waste in Asia and Australia.