The empire of scrounge

[bunnyjadwiga]

I'm interested in Jeff Ferrell, an anthropologist who generally who used an 8-month job hiatus to investigate dumpster-diving as a way of life.
The Chronicle of Higher Education had an article on him:
http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i29/29a01001.htm

He wrote a book basked on his experiences: Empire of Scrounge: Inside the Urban Underground of Dumpster Diving, Trash Picking, and Street Scavenging, published by NYU press in 2006.

What I find particularly interesting about such work is how it touches on the first- and second-hand economies. I'm no Freegan, and their behaviors appall me, but every time I read some writer complaining that buying books secondhand or reading them at the library is stealing from them**, I realize that in a great many ways I'm not as entrenched in the consumer cycle as I thought I was, because of my participation in the second-hand, hand-me-down, and donation economies.

** EDIT: The last time I heard this was an article by Anthony Doerr. Oddly enough, it's currently down off the sponsor's website, but here's an article that reference's Doerr's argument:
http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/letters/readers/not_getting_all_deweyeyed.php

Comments

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

Freegans are trying to cut themselves off from the consumer economy, at least, that's what freegan.info says. But when you get right down to it, documents like http://freegan.info/?page=WhyFreegan
suggest that their modus operandi is a lot less, ahem, moral than I would prefer to be, and a lot more like the freeloading variety of hip upper middle class anarchist.
As someone pointed out, eating out of dumpsters because you don't *want* to work may end up vicimizing people who *can't* work: http://www.tigersandstrawberries.com/2006/02/09/freeganism-whats-up-with-that/