This is an excellent book. It is well-researched and exceptionally well-written. I particularly like the fact that O'Brien is utterly fearless and critically independent. He writes vigorously and entertainingly and challenges conventional wisdoms at every turn. He knows the literature -- literary, historical, empirical and theoretical -- thoroughly and brings to it an extraordinarily inquiring and critical mind. There have been a few good books on waste, and this one is certainly among the very best of them.... Martin O'Brien has established himself as one of the few sociological authorities on this subject and, on this evidence, he is the very best of them.
-Christopher Rootes, Professor of Environmental Politics and Political Sociology, University of Kent
This is an excellent, well written, scholarly and exciting book -- relevant to policy as well as academia... It does more than merely 'filling a gap' between historical studies of waste and more 'technocratic' and environmental debates -- in effect it sets out a whole new way of conceptualising the constitutive role of rubbish in society and as such its intellectual impact is set to ripple out widely across a range of related debates.
-Elizabeth Shove, Professor of Sociology, University of Lancaster
[This] book reads as an ode to rubbish, which seems to have waited two long centuries since the Industrial Revolution to be written. It is a memorable addition to the sociology of waste, with its claims that societies have been fabricated out of waste and waste is the ground upon which they stand. For its literary elegance and profound scholarship, the book is destined to be a classic... Essential.
- T. Niazi, University of Wisconsin, Choice
This is an excellent book. It is well-researched and exceptionally well-written. I particularly like the fact that O'Brien is utterly fearless and critically independent. He writes vigorously and entertainingly and challenges conventional wisdoms at every turn. He knows the literature -- literary, historical, empirical and theoretical -- thoroughly and brings to it an extraordinarily inquiring and critical mind. There have been a few good books on waste, and this one is certainly among the very best of them.... Martin O'Brien has established himself as one of the few sociological authorities on this subject and, on this evidence, he is the very best of them.
-Christopher Rootes, Professor of Environmental Politics and Political Sociology, University of Kent
This is an excellent, well written, scholarly and exciting book -- relevant to policy as well as academia... It does more than merely 'filling a gap' between historical studies of waste and more 'technocratic' and environmental debates -- in effect it sets out a whole new way of conceptualising the constitutive role of rubbish in society and as such its intellectual impact is set to ripple out widely across a range of related debates.
-Elizabeth Shove, Professor of Sociology, University of Lancaster
'For its literary elegance and profound scholarship, the book is destined to be a classic.' --T. Niazi, University of Wisconsin
'Essential. Graduate and undergraduate collections in sociology of waste, environmental studies, cultural studies, and waste management.' -- T. Niazi, University of Wisconsin
