biography
| name: |
Rathje, William L(aurens)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1945– )
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| biography:
| Anthropologist and garbologist, born in South Bend, Indiana, USA. He took his PhD in anthropology at Harvard (1971) and returned to the University of Arizona, his undergraduate alma mater, to teach anthropology. In 1973 he formed the Garbage Project, initially as a method by which student anthropologists could analyze aspects of the local community. In the years following, he not only demonstrated how garbage can be used in this way, but also discovered that garbage and refuse decompose much more slowly in modern dumps than thought. He is credited with coining the term ‘garbology’, the study of a society by the examination of its refuse. Among his many publications, he co-wrote Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage (1992) and ‘Beyond the Pail’ (1991), an essay in Garbage magazine. |
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