Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is about social change, more particularly about one of the most prominent ways in which social change is debated at the present time. It addresses the ways in which the metaphor of waste is used to frame the passage from one 'era' of history to another: from an era of social democracy and the welfare state, built around mass industrial labour, to an age variously defined as 'post-industrial', 'globalised' or 'neo-liberal'. The book represents a series of different responses to this characterisation of a 'world laid waste', presented by scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds. The focus on the empirical helps bring into relief the relational complexity and contingency that contains within it the possibility for unexpected, hopeful and positive political alternatives to overarching narratives of cultural loss and social destruction or wastage.