Waste Work in the Global South: Exploring Activity Theory as a Framework for Understanding Distributed Roles of Intermediaries in Cape Town’s Urban Waste Economy

Abstract Waste work in cities of the Global South is arranged with myriad actors, both formal and informal, who individually and collectively, and to varying capacities, play a distinctive yet interconnected role in the urban waste economy. These roles are interrelated and involve the management, movement and monetisation of recyclable waste. However, given the complexity of infrastructure(s), technology as well as urban socio-spatial stratification within contexts of the Global South, conventional frameworks that seek to explain waste work have limited capacity in delineating the varying role(s) of actors within a community of practice and how these roles are continuously changing through mutual interconnections and adaptation. This article explores Activity Theory as a framework for understanding how the role(s) of actors are continuously negotiated through mediating factors such as (i) technology/infrastructure; (ii) rules and regulations; (iii) community of actors and (iv) the division of labour. This article draws on an ethnographic case of intermediary waste workers within Cape Town’s urban waste economy, and rather than focussing on the role of individual actor(s) as (an) isolated element(s), this article embeds their individual roles in relation to a composite network of actors. The results of this article demonstrate how the role(s) of actors doing waste work are non-linear and are continuously mediated through their relations with technology, infrastructure and their interconnections with other actors. Moreover, this article provides holistic insight into new forms of knowledge production through waste work in the Global South, collaboration among myriad actors and the development of common consciousness toward the transformation and valorisation of waste.