Everyday Activism and Zero Waste Living in China
This project explores tensions and synergies between individual practices of “Zero Waste Living” (ZWL), civil society promotion of ZWL, and the Chinese state’s narratives of “ecological civilisation” and “circular economy”. It is a collaboration between Anna, Tom Johnson and Katherine Yuet Wong and draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews in Hangzhou, online research and interviews with campaigners involved in China’s Zero Waste Alliance. The project illustrates how everyday practices allow ZWL advocates to articulate subjectivity and care between private and public spheres. It contributes to the study of activism by questioning the binary between “everyday environmentalism” and contentious collective action and promotes a more nuanced understanding of agency, subjectivity and ethics. It is supported by the University of Sheffield and by the University of Oxford.
