Inside the Sanitation System: Mierle Ukeles, Urban Ecology and the Social Circulation of Garbage

Abstract

To be sure there are examples of "homeless" garbage barges, shunted from port to port, and sanitation strikes, such as New York City's week-long 1968 work stoppage.1 Such events temporarily bring trash into public visibility and consciousness, but these are aberrations that occur only against the backdrop of the comfortable invisibility of the garbage that we ceaselessly produce. Since most people do not live in conditions rife with garbage, what is cast off is both out of sight and out of mind.