Islands, long portrayed in the western imaginary as remote, static and bounded entities, have increasingly come to be viewed as places constantly in the making: as connected sites formed by complex and shifting relations and assemblages of people and things. This paper considers the role that waste plays in this process through exploration of how discarded and unwanted matter decays, moves and comes to rest in relation to a small island in the Maldives. It shows how thinking about the island through waste and its circulation via the actions of human and non-human agents reveals the ways in which the island is constituted and connected to other places. The paper also examines people’s daily, practical engagements with the island’s waste, and how these ongoing interactions and encounters shape the ways in which the island is being made, materially and aesthetically. In these ways, we show how thinking through waste contributes to how we understand place-making and specifically to the making of islandness.

中文翻译：

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成为一座孤岛：通过垃圾运输建立联系和场所

长期以来，在西方的想象中，岛屿被描绘成遥远的、静态的和有界的实体，越来越多地被视为不断形成的地方：由复杂多变的人和事物的关系和组合形成的连接场所。本文通过探索废弃和不需要的物质如何在马尔代夫的一个小岛上腐烂、移动和静止，考虑废物在这一过程中所起的作用。它展示了如何通过人类和非人类代理人的行为来思考岛屿的废物及其流通，揭示了岛屿的构成方式以及与其他地方的联系方式。该论文还研究了人们日常与岛上废物的实际接触，以及这些持续的互动和遭遇如何塑造岛屿的建造方式，物质上和美学上。通过这些方式，我们展示了对废物的思考如何有助于我们理解场所营造，特别是岛屿的形成。