#sanatation

The claim to the centrality of sanitation work extends beyond just public health. San workers are also, according to Nagle, key players in maintaining the most basic rhythms of capitalism. If consumed goods can’t be discarded, the space they occupy remains full, and new good can’t become part of the market or household. This may be a simplistic description of a dense and complex set of processes, but the fundamental reality is straightforward: used-up stuff must be thrown out for new stuff to have a place... Contemporary habits of consumption and disposal represent a use of time that has no historical precedent. Angle is careful to make the connection: “We depend on our ability to move fast, and so assume the briefest relationships with coffee cups, shopping bags, packaging of all kinds—encumbrances we must shed quickly so that we can maintain what I call our average necessary quotidian velocity.” By this logic, sanitation workers are absolutely central to our physical well-being as residents of a metropolis and to our sense of proper citizenship within a hyper-paced world, even while the work of sanitation remains bluntly unknown.