IPC-Ig Research Associate, Beatriz Magalhães, presents her research findings of her MA thesis about the rights of Brazilian pickers and their relationships with Brazilian society

1. LIMINALITY AND EXCLUSION:
BRAZILIAN PICKERS AND THEIR
RELATIONSHIPS WITH BRAZILIAN
SOCIETY
Beatriz Judice Magalhães
IPC Research Seminars
23 September 2013

2. 1- INTRODUCTION


Garbage as the other side of the production and
consumption process; Recycling as the opposite
process of consumption.
O’Brien (2008):
 -“"We" have not become "inordinately touchy"
about what happens to our waste(…)”

“rubbish stands on a subterranean rung of the
ladder of our collective awareness - and ever
has it been so.”

3. INTRODUCTION



Žižek (2008): “The problem is that trash doesn’t
disappears.”
Once something is thrown away, it is turned into
garbage, and it then becomes an object for actions
of those who are responsible for collecting it and
taking it to its final destination, the garbage
dumps.
However, between being thrown away by the
consumer and being collected, garbage may be
also object for action of other subjects, the
pickers.

4. INTRODUCTION

All over the world, pickers are in a peculiar
situation, because:

They are the key element to transform garbage
into a commodity, which contributes to the
reproduction of capitalist system,
And, at the same time,

They are marginalized and excluded in/ of the
society; as poor people, they don’t have access
to many rights and services that people with a
higher income have.

5. INTRODUCTION

Recycling is an activity that has been
increasingly acquiring more value, in the context
of the “environmental paradigm” that has been
recently ascending on main debates in
governments, media, universities…
Main questions:
- In recent years, has the work of the pickers in
Brazil become more recognized because of the
ascension of the“environmental paradigm”?


6. INTRODUCTION
- In other words, is the changing of perceptions
regarding environment in society being followed by
a social change?
- The main purpose of this work is to investigate
the relationships between recyclable
materials pickers and Brazilian society.

7. INTRODUCTION

Taking into account important events such as the
creation of the MNCR (National Recyclable
Materials Pickers` Movement) in 2001, the
approval of LNRS (National Solid Waste Act) in
2010, and, in recent decades, the rise in
significance of environmental issues, this work
also discusses the possibility of positive changes
in the relationship between pickers and society,
considering its historical characterization by
liminality (as proposed by Victor Turner) and
exclusion.

8. INTRODUCTION




This work examines the relations between
pickers of recyclable materials and Brazilian
society through three foci of analysis:
1 st : a set of interviews with recyclable materials
pickers in different situations, in Belo Horizonte
and its surrounding area;
2 nd: two documentaries about pickers – “Boca
de Lixo” (Eduardo Coutinho, 1992) and “Waste
Land (Lucy Walker, 2009)
3 rd: the interactions with policy makers and
representatives of business sectors and nongovernmental organizations.

9. 2- FROM WASTE PICKERS TO RECYCLABLE
MATERIALS PICKERS: THE CREATION OF A
CATEGORY

Fieldwork between August 2010 and February
2012 in Belo Horizonte;

10. PICTURE 1: CONSUMPTION AND RECYCLING
CHAIN AND MAIN ACTORS INVOLVED:

11. DEPOIMENTO DE DONA GERALDA,
CATADORA, 61 ANOS:

“I began to collect papers
when I was eight years old.
During that period, people
were treated as if they
were garbage, nobody had
an environmental vision,
and nobody knew what the
environment was. And we
could find work with
recyclables materials.
(Pickers’ situation) today is
better than it was when I
began…But it still needs
many improvements.”

“Eu comecei a catar
papel com oito anos de
idade, né. Naquele
tempo, as pessoas eram
tratadas como lixo,
ninguém tinha visão de
meioambiente, ninguém
nem sabia o que era o
meio-ambiente. E a
gente conseguiu achar
alternativa de trabalho
foi no material
reciclável.”

12. “People generallly uses
very often the word
“garbage”. It is not
garbage, it is recyclable
material.” (Gilberto)

“It isn’t garbage. There is
no garbage. I usually say
that, if it was garbage, I
hadn’t raised nine
children, I was not
working until today , and
so on. Hence, this is not
garbage. It is raw material
that comes out from
nature and which is not
correctly destined by
people. We give them the
correct destination since a
long time. We know how to
do it.” (Dona Geralda)
“Na verdade, tem uma
coisa que o pessoal usa
muito, que é falar essa
palavra lixo. Não é lixo,
é material reciclável.”
“Não é lixo, né?...Não existe
lixo. Eu falo que, se fosse
lixo, eu não tinha criado nove
filhos, não tava aí até hoje
trabalhando, né? Então, não
é lixo. É matéria que sai
extraída da natureza e que
as pessoas não
dá o destino correto pra elas.
Nós dá esse destino há
muitos anos. Nós sabe como
fazer isso.” (Dona Geralda,
em entrevista realizada em
25/10/2011)

13. 

One of the conclusions here is that, from the picker’s
point of view, the material collected is not seen as
garbage.
We can say that semantically the word “garbage”only
refers to the person that throws away something. To
people that are going to collect the materials and give
them a different destination, the word “garbage”is
innapropriate, since here we are talking precisely
about the material that will be used for sustenance.
We can even say that someone’s garbage is
someother’s sustenance, both in direct and indirect
sense, regarding at the same time pickers that collect
leftover food and those who collect “recyclable
garbage”and transform it into “recyclabe material”.

14. 
Waste sorting has
existed since more than
a thousand years
ago…It exists since
many years ago, but it
has not always been
official. Now we hope
that this thing that has
been created, waste
sorting, ecology, we hope
that it is not only a
ephemeral thing, that is
in fashion now and will
not be in the future.

“A coleta seletiva tem mais
de cem anos. (...) A coleta
seletiva já existe há muitos
anos, muitos anos, só que
oficialmente não, né.
Agora, assim, a gente acha
que criou-se, a gente
espera que não seja um
modismo, criou uma coisa
que é a coleta seletiva,
ecologia(...)Isso é bom
também.(Gilberto, em
entrevista realizada em
26/10/2011).”

15. 
“We, pickers, have been
doing services since many
years ago. And, because of
the lack of information and
of capacity, we didn’t see
that…Today, after federal
and state’s programs, after
institutions that support
pickers have been created,
we began to see this from
another point of view, we
began to see how
important pickers are in
environment and in
society, and for society, in
general.” (Madalenainterview- October 25,
2011)

“Hoje, o papel dos catadores há
longos anos, a gente já presta
um serviço ambiental, há
muitos anos. E a gente, por
falta de informação, por falta de
capacitação, a gente não via,
muitos catadores não viam isso.
Hoje, depois dos programas do
governo federal, do governo
estadual, das instituições
apoiadoras dos catadores, do
movimento, a gente começou a
ver isso de outra forma, ver a
valorização do nosso trabalho,
ver o quanto que o catador é
importante no meio-ambiente e
na sociedade, e pra sociedade
em geral.” (Madalena, em
entrevista realizada em
25/10/2011)

16. PICKERS, SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL
JUSTICE


As a conclusion, pickers’s activity could be
characterized as what Joan Martinez Allier (2009)
classifies as “the environmentalism of the poor”.
To Allier, the inevitable conflict between dominant
economic order and the environment gives room for
the creation of a third current of environmentalism.
The author says that “the main thrust of this third
corrent is not a sacred reverence for Nature but a
material interest in the environment as a source and
a requirement for livelihood (...) Its ethics derive from
a demand for contemporary social justice among
humans.” (ALLIER: 2002)

17. 3- ANTHROPOLOGICAL REFLEXIONS
BASED ON TWO CINEMATOGRAPHIC
REPRESENTATIONS OF PICKERS


We assume here that movies are a way to
represent reality from which we can interpretate.
It is also assumed that the “privileged look”
(Xavier: 2003: 36) supplied by movies make
possible to the viewer the access to an unknown
world: those of the landfills.

18. 3- ANTHROPOLOGICAL REFLEXIONS BASED ON TWO
CINEMATOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATIONS OF PICKERS
WASTE LAND (LIXO EXTRAORDINÁRIO)- LUCY WALKER,
2009
Tião and picture “Marat
Sebastião”
Vik in Gramacho

19. THE SCAVANGERS (BOCA DE LIXO)(EDUARDO COUTINHO, 1992)

20. LIXO EXTRAORDINÁRIO
(LUCY WALKER, 2009)



Documentary made from a work developed by
artist Vik Muniz and his team with a group of
pickers that worked on Aterro do Jardim
Gramacho, in Rio de Janeiro.
Transformation idea is fundamental in this work
Transformations in the worlds of things and in
the world of people

21. LIXO EXTRAORDINÁRIO
(LUCY WALKER, 2009)
Vik’s picture of Suelem, a
young picker at Gramacho,
and her children
Suelem and her children

22. 

Transformation in the world of things is radical:
Vik’s picture cristalizes not only garbage’s
transformaton into a commodity, but the
transformation of what has been thrown away
into a very high valued object, which only a very
small group of people is able to buy.
Transformation in world of people is more
complex and we can argue if it really exists, since
it remets us to structural questions.

23. BOCA DE LIXO(EDUARDO COUTINHO, 1992)

24. 

Documentary filmed on vazadouro de Itaoca, in
São Gonçalo, close to Rio de Janeiro.
People’s relationship with garbage is
characterized by dependence and valorization, as
we can see by the following passages of
interviews with 2 women::

25. 

Lúcia: “We need that waste bin, because there are food
for the pig, there are clothes, good clothes that we find
there, good shoes...I, for example, send, give clothes for
people, I take many clothes, because we can find good
things there...Because sometimes what is not useful for
the rich, is useful for the poor, and for us that is
useful, there are lots of useful things there.”
“A gente precisa daquela lixeira, porque tem uma
comida de porco, tem uma roupa, a gente acha as
roupas boas, calçados bons, por exemplo, eu mando,
dou roupa pras pessoas, eu pego muita roupa, porque
vem roupa ali, vem coisas boas. Porque o que não
serve, às vezes o que não serve lá pro rico, serve pro
pobre, e pra gente aquilo é útil, tem muita coisa útil
ali.”

26. 
Jurema:

“That garbage is our bread and butter,
can you see? (...) And all my children
were raised up with garbage’s money...

“Aquele” lixo é um quebra galho, sabe?
Aquele lixo é o braço direito da gente. E
os meus filho são tudo criado é com o
dinheiro do lixo, mermo.”

27. WASTE LAND, THE SCAVANGERS AND THE
ORDER OF THINGS

So garbage is referred here like something that is
useful:
“We need that waste bin”
 “for us that is useful, there are lots of useful
things there.”


28. 
This is opposite to the definition of garbage,
always referred as something useless, with no
value, thrown away.

29. Here, like with street pickers, someone´s garbages
is someother´s livelihood but now, also more
directly, since what has been thrown away is
useful not only to be sold, but also to eat, to
dress...

Here one can note that there is a subjective side
of utility, depending on different conditions for
the subjects, as Lúcia´s phrase show: “sometimes
what is not useful for the rich, is useful for the
poor”.

30. WASTE LAND/ LIXO EXTRAORDINÁRIO
 As
suggested by the title in Portuguese,
here garbage is “extraordinary”, because it
changes the order of things. Hence, once it
is transformed into art, garbage is no
more something rejected, but it is now
raw material for highly desired works of
art, as we can see in the auction scene.

31. THE SCAVANGERS/ BOCA DE LIXO
 In Boca de Lixo, on the contrary, there
is no such a trangression. Despite the
word garbage is considered as
“useful”for those that survive from it,
those people are already out of the
system, and also relegated to the
status of residues, in respect of


labour market
Society as a whole, that allows their
survival to occur without dignity,
creating feeling of revolting and
shame even for themselves:

32. 
Both movies bring into light the question of
pickers visibility and in this sense both of them
can be considered as trangressors of an order
that excludes them lefting them invisible to the
eyes of society.

33. 4- PARADOXES AND CONTINUITIES THAT
DEFINE PICKERS´S POSITION IN BRAZILIAN
SOCIETY


Rising of valuation on environmental questions
can be perceived in the last decades in Brazil;
2001: Creation of the National Movement of
Recyclable Materials Pickers (MNCR)
August 2010: National Waste Act was approved;
(Lei 12305- establishes National Waste Policies)


34. 
In the last years, many sectors of Brazilian
society have been including enviromnent issues
in their agendas, although these speeches are not
homogeneous neither always trully respect the
environment.

35. The rise of "environmental paradigm",
 the recent discovery of other actors that can turn
garbage commodity,
and
 the organization of pickers as a profession, as
well as the elaboration of public policies to correct
destination of waste, notably PNRS,


set up a new order with respect to garbage in
Brazilian society.

36. 
In this context, pickers have been fighting for
society to recognize their services and rights.

37. 
Recycling, the opposite of consumption, emerges
as another objet of valuation;

38. 

The situation of pickers in Brazil is characterized
as one of liminality, as defined by Victor Turner
(1995):
It is, then, always among the signs of an explicit
exclusion and an incipient or indirect inclusion
that scavengers are situated in society, which
makes possible that one evoke the concept of
liminality as proposed by Turner (2008) to
develop a theoretical approach concerning the
positions occupied by the pickers in society.

39. LIMINALITY

“The attributes of liminality or of liminal
personae (“threshold people”) are necessarily
ambiguous, since this conditions and these
persons elude or slip through the network of
classifications that normally locate states and
positions into cultural spaces. Liminal entities are
neither here nor there; they are betwixt and
between the positions assigned and arrayed by
law, custom, convention, and ceremonial.”
(TURNER: 1995: 95)

40. QUESTIONS THAT STILL HAVEN’T BEEN
ANSWERED:

What are the effects of this new valuation of
recycling? Will it bring good effect to pickers?
Will they be effectively recognized by society as
the protagonists and pioneers of an activity that
only very recently has been valued by society?
Will they achieve a good remuneration for the
services and by consequence be out of the group
of the poorests and the excluded?

41. THANKS FOR YOUR
ATTENTION AND
TIME!
