Book review: reclaiming the discarded: life and labor on Rio's garbage dump by Kathleen M. Millar

In Reclaiming the Discarded: Life and Labor on Rio's Garbage Dump, Kathleen M. Millar offers a new ethnographic study of Jardim Gramacho, the biggest waste dump in Latin America until its closure in 2012. The impassioned analysis that arises out of Millar’s immersion in the lives and labour of the catadores who sift through the waste brings dignity to subjects otherwise considered marginal and reveals a progressive potential in work otherwise considered ‘rubbish’, writes Dagna Rams.