‘Pictures of poo’: the sensed and unknown matters of poo, waste and care in children’s mobile experiences in Santiago, Chile

Talking about their walking practices around Santiago, children participating in three different studies coincided on the smell/sight of poo as a dominant aspect of their walks that produced disgust and concern. In their accounts and photographs of their everyday mobilities, children explicitly talked about or exposed poo that they encountered in public spaces, expressing an ethical concern around how people's relations with poo can signal both caring and uncaring relationships with the city they inhabit. From this starting point, we argue that poo (embedded in the wider notion of waste) belongs in a twofold realm: a sensed realm of what is seen, felt, thought, known, said and shown in relation to waste as we encounter it through our senses in everyday immediate perception spaces. And an out-of-sight realm of what is not seen, felt, thought, known, said or shown about waste that occurs in places in the shadows of everyday life, for most, ideally. We attempt to bring together these realms, unfolding an approach to the dirt-poo-litter assemblage that reflects on the interdependent scales of care – from public space to planetary environmental issues.