Anthropologists have shown how recent efforts to tell apart foreigners from autochthons have played out, often subtly disguised, in panics over objects that may seem trivial: “alien species” of fish, trees, or plants that endanger “local” nature. Little has been said about plastic's dominant position among these objects. In Samburu county, northern Kenya, “plastic boys” are unemployed men whom others despise for being unattached, “useless paupers,” who, not unlike plastic itself, have allegedly no capacity to grow roots and thrive. Analyzing this subject position against a wider background of objects and afflictions deemed “foreign”—including plastic bags, plastic rice, plastic hair, plastic smiles, and homosexuality as a “plastic pollutant”—I show how different troublesome objectifications of plastic resonate with one another and their wider context. I argue that panics over plastics and the politics of belonging shape one another, producing new, less‐obvious forms of inclusion and exclusion. [belonging, materiality, plastic, Samburu, Kenya]

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对塑料的恐慌：肯尼亚的财产归属

人类学家已经表明，最近对区分外国人与自动控制的努力是如何对似乎看似微不足道的物体：鱼类，树木或植物的“外来物种”造成威胁的，这些物种可能危及当地的自然。关于塑料在这些物体中的主导地位，人们几乎没有说过。在肯尼亚北部的桑布鲁县，“塑料男孩”是失业者，其他人因没有依恋而被鄙视，“无用的贫民”，与塑料本身不同，据称没有生根发芽的能力。在更广泛的被认为是“外来”物体和痛苦的背景下分析该主题位置，包括塑料袋，塑料大米，塑料发，塑料笑容，和同性恋作为“塑料污染物” —我展示了塑料的各种麻烦的客观化对象之间如何产生共鸣，以及它们所处的环境如何。我认为，对塑料的恐慌和归属政治相互影响，产生了新的，不太明显的包容和排斥形式。[财产，物质，塑料，桑布鲁，肯尼亚]