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"Food savers: Anti-food waste activism and its material practices in the Czech context

Publication at Faculty of Humanities |
2014

Abstract

In this contribution I argue that waste is an ontologically multiple reality (there does not exist one single ontology of it), and, as would Annemarie Mol (1999) say: "Ontology does not precede or escape politics, but has a politics of its own". I was influenced with this stream of thoughts when I have started my research among two groups of Czech anti-food waste activists in order to explore their ontological politics of food waste and compare it with ontological politics of big food chains (supermarkets).

I have been doing participant observation and interviews among Food Not Bombs and Zachraň jídlo (Save food). I argue that those two groups enact different versions of food waste.

In case of Food Not Bombs movement I will call it the ontological politics of creative waste. The members of Food Not Bombs movement react to the actual supply of trash bins and enact food (being) form their actual findings.

This is not always an easy task because dumpster diving is illegal activity. Trash bins are locked in backyards of supermarkets in many cases and the activists have to face up to security guys in particular places.

In the second case, activist of "Save Food" does not operate with raw and rotten matter, they do not dumpster dive during their collective activities. In most cases, they enact something which I call the ontological politics of planned waste.