So a break in the academics equals a much needed break in the WNWN collection for zone 5 (classrooms). After all, no people, means no trash, and the buildings will more than likely be locked. Most of the artifact assemblage is small items, but it takes just as long to properly catalog a one inch piece of spiral notebook edge as an entire issue of the Argonaut (U of I student paper). Now begins the difficult task of interpreting the data. By the end of the week we should be caught up on the indexing of the catalog sheets and be able to analyze the artifacts objectively by weight and number of items in any given category.
We’ve run out of time to conduct follow on surveys about student’s views on indoor trash; I presume we would be even less likely to encounter students willing to give us feedback at this academically challenging time of the semester. Alas we have to add this issue to the future research section of our project.
While reading other group’s progress, I had a concern about all of my own interpretations. Can we really know what causes people to leave the artifacts that they do, especially fast food and pre-packaged products? We find food packaging in the classrooms because that is the only option for students who are hungry at the time they are in our zones. I can’t bring my home-cooked meal and dishes to class, all I can do is buy something from the vending machines or the commons, which necessarily comes in a single serve package. So the important thing is not What I find, but Why it was left, and can I really know why someone (who is not myself) left it? Was it on purpose due to Marxist ideas of fetishism in our commodity culture and we simply don’t care? Was it habitus from practice theory, we don’t even think about it? Could it be an ideology of the superiority of culture over nature and our own ode to progress? Or is trash simply trash? Is there such a thing as “just trash”…? Better put your hip-waders on folks, it’s gettin’ deep in here (in theory, in trash, in bull). I’ll keep you posted on what I dig up.
~Stephanie
