Abstract As a pervasive, material element of the global, plastics raise potent social and environmental questions. More than merely the “stuff” of potential global prosperity, plastics are substances that people inscribe with varied cultural meanings. Deploying four conceptual “entry points” for global research, we explore how global plastics have become not only a site of an emergent socioecological crisis but themselves a point of leverage for a more humanized globalization. We approach the problem first as an exercise in reframing, shifting our viewpoint away from debates on waste to re-examine ideas of culture and symbolism. Then, working through the entry points of the particular, materiality and affect, we ground our argument in examples from the contemporary pandemic response, earlier ethnographic work, and our own ethnographic projects. We show how plastics have failed people’s desires for a durable modernity, but nonetheless come to shape the ways they feel and think about themselves and each other as sharing responsibility for a global world.

中文翻译：

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关于全球可塑性：通过情感物质性构建全球

摘要 作为全球普遍存在的物质元素，塑料引发了严重的社会和环境问题。塑料不仅仅是潜在的全球繁荣的“材料”，更是人们铭记的具有不同文化意义的物质。我们为全球研究部署了四个概念性“切入点”，探讨了全球塑料如何不仅成为紧急社会生态危机的发源地，而且本身成为实现更加人性化的全球化的杠杆点。我们首先将这个问题作为重构的练习，将我们的观点从关于浪费的辩论转移到重新审视文化和象征主义的想法。然后，通过特殊性、重要性和影响的切入点，我们将我们的论点以当代大流行应对、早期民族志工作和我们自己的民族志项目的例子为基础。