Human waste management is a dangerous, exciting, and culturally-important field. Since the Victorian Era, the West has used water-based forms of human waste management that operate under a strict politic of purity and maintain dualistic notions of the mind and body. This thesis explores the sustainable sanitation movement in Vermont, which is addressing the environmental, socio-economic, and cultural concerns they have with conventional wastewater systems by experimenting with and advocating for experimental forms of dry sanitation. I argue that through this experimental questioning, the sustainable sanitation movement in Vermont rejects the mainstream, linear narrative of progress often used to describe the history of human waste management, as well as the purity politics associated with it. By engaging critically with our cycles of eating, excreting, and growing, sustainable sanitation opens up new possibilities for relating the individual body to the Earth body.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Author-supplied Keywords","value":["Vermont","Human waste management","Purity"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 33909