MAKING A MUSEUM: Materializing Regimes of Value with the NYC Department of Sanitation

I spent the last week going on daily mongo* hunts. The results yielded many choice items, several of which are now decorating my apartment, and more importantly, changed the way I look at garbage and the city as a whole. I have learned that mongo is a dynamic cultural phenomenon, integral to the system of waste disposal in New York City.
The methodology I used for this project was simple. I kept a daily mongo diary of what I found, what I brought home, and what I left on the street, and I took digital photographs to correlate with the daily log. This diary also noted the time of day and location of my search. I limited myself to my own neighborhood for the sake of consistent comparison (I wanted to be able to compare what days, times, and specific blocks lent the best findings) and convenience. I had to keep to my schedule of work and school, thus my own neighborhood was the only place I returned to on a daily basis. I further limited my mongo to items I had a specific use for. If I found items that would not go to use in my own home, I left them on the street.
Jeff Ferrell served as an inspiration for this project with his book, The Empire of Scrounge, an extensive experiment exploring the culture of scrounging other people’s trash for usable goods. His approach was to “wait and watch, to see what the empire [of scrounge] might offer me, to improvise my survival and my analysis from whatever emerged” (2006:204). I also wanted to let the mongo tell its own story.
I have learned that mongo is a dynamic cultural phenomenon in that its meaning, both literally and symbolically, varies and changes. Mongo does not have a static cultural significance. People not only have different perceptions about mongo, but also have perceptions that are prone to change in relation to their own experiences. I have seen these changes occur in the people I have shared my project with and in the way mongo has changed my own perceptions. I began this project apathetic in regards to mongo, and I am leaving it an impassioned supporter.
Before conducting this research I never thought about mongo. Garbage on the street was invisible. Yet after this week, the city is entirely different. I notice that my eyes unconsciously fall to the sidewalk, looking for signs of mongo. It is as if the city were a giant oyster opened up for my own use, free of charge. If I need something and have the patience, more than likely the bountiful garbage of New York will provide.
Mongo can cover a wide range of waste disposal actions, which differ in their cultural stigma. Mongo can mean everything from dumpster diving to recycling. It can represent a way of survival and subsistence or a dirty, socially taboo exercise. Carl Zimring explains that "waste is by definition negative and association with waste has social and cultural implications….handling waste requires breaking taboos about cleanliness and order” (2004:80). Yet on the other hand waste encompasses dual meanings. As the old saying goes, one man’s trash is another’s treasure. Martin O’Brien explains that waste has a “capacity to be its own opposite, to have no apparent value and yet potentially be valuable” (1999:268).
This project has not only taught me about the dynamism and duality of mongo, but also its importance to the system of waste disposal in New York City. Cooperation is a key element to the success of garbage disposal in the city. The citizens, superintendents, shopkeepers, and sanitation workers all work together in a finely tuned system to keep the city clean. Mongo is also part of this cooperation scheme.
Primarily, it serves as a system of shared understanding. The objects I found on the street did not seem to be left by careless citizens unconcerned with their hapless waste. These items seemed to be placed on the street meaningfully in the hopes that someone would rescue them. One piece of mongo was labeled, “Free! Take it!” Other times, and more often, mongo was clearly separated from other garbage, set in clean stacks or bagged together without signs of day-to-day refuse. In this way, mongo is a form of recycling. People place their old objects on the street hopeful that someone will recycle them in their own home. The mongoer is aware of this hope and thus does a service through their mongo. When I found an item to bring home, I was not only excited and grateful for the find, but I also felt if I had done a good deed. I had rid the city of one less waste and saved the landfill from one less piece of trash. I had found a home for a discarded and unloved object. It was a feeling not unlike adopting a pet.
Mongo also serves as a key part of our system of waste disposal because it works to “undermine the carefully constructed cultural status of consumption” (Ferrell 2006:203). It creates an important dialogue about what we waste, what we consume, and what we value. By breaking the social taboos of handling waste we allow a dialogue to take place. The most important aspect of this project has been being able to take part in that dialogue.
If our garbage remains invisible it allows for apathy. Mongo is key to the system of waste disposal because it forces us to look at our waste. It forces us to consider what we consume, what we throw away, and its repercussions. As an added bonus, and for all those unconvinced, mongo can also provide stylish home furnishings and sometimes even an expensive new purse from Barney’s!

*I use the term mongo in this paper in three forms. It is used as a verb, meaning “to mongo,” the act of searching for and acquiring usable goods left in the garbage. It is also used as a noun, meaning the item or items that are found. I have also used a variation of the noun form,mongoer, meaning one who mongos.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ferrell, Jeff. 2006. Empire of Scrounge: Inside the Urban Underground of Dumpster Diving, Trash Picking, and Street Scavenging. New York University Press: New York and London.

O’Brien, M. 1999. Rubbish-Power: Towards Sociology of the Rubbish Society. In J. Hearn and S. Roseneil, eds., Consuming Cultures: Power and Resistance. New York: St. Martins.

Zimring, Carl. 2004. Dirty Work: How Hygiene and Xenophobia Marginalized the American Waste Trades. Enviornmental History 9(1):80-101.

Mongo Diary:
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Mongo Pictures: