| Page source: http://www.ghi-dc.org/publications/ghipubs/annual/al05.pdf (...) Waste and Want: The Other Side of Consumption by Susan Strasser The first half of my title derives from a familiar English proverb. Waste not, want not, we say; do not squander your resources and you will not go hungry. Although it sounds like Benjamin Franklin, this adage was not recorded in its present form before the nineteenth century. An eighteenth-century variant, Wilful waste brings woeful want, may be found in dictionaries of quotations attributed to a variety of authors, all quoting it as a common maxim. The proverb juxtaposes two words rich in meaning in both verb and noun forms. "Waste" suggests not only useless consumption ”squandering, extravagance, and indulgence" but dissipation, destruction, and death; the last a verb form often associated with the American war in Vietnam, where "to waste" meant "to kill." Waste means decline, as in "wasting away." As a noun, waste is just one among many terms for the topic of my historical inquiry: garbage, debris, refuse, rubbish, trash. "Want" branches out in two directions: on the one hand, it connotes craving, desire, yearning; on the other, lack, need, poverty. Waste not, want not, then, suggests many links in addition to the one between indulgence and privation. Above all, I intend this maxim to cast two historical constructs -garbage and consumer culture-each in the light of the other. While acknowledging the moralist perspective implied in the title and the present-day concerns implied in my choice of topic, I want to link these concepts-waste and want, garbage and consumer culture-analytically and come to understand them historically. I have written this lecture at the beginning of my inquiry, or, more precisely, at the end of its first stage, and have chosen to reveal what may be premature speculation, in part to organize my own thoughts, (...) See full paper... Back to consumption or wealth |