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Garbage In—But Hopefully Not Just Garbage Out! Professional Development and the Politics of Landfill Site Remediation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2006

Lawrence T. Woods
Lawrence T. Woods
Affiliation:
American University of Sharjah
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Extract

When is garbage not garbage? A conference on cleaning, clearing, and reclaiming a dump site may seem an unlikely place for political scientists and scholars of international relations to pursue professional development, but the pursuit of knowledge knows no bounds—even if the smell can be hard on the nose itself! Observing such supposedly non-political sessions can quickly reveal that they are anything but, and discussions of how garbage is handled elsewhere can offer useful comparative insights as the local becomes global. Furthermore, few occasions provide such a useful context for developing one's critical thinking skills and recognizing the value of interdisciplinarity—an approach often touted as desirable in our profession.My thanks to John Chilton, Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, the members of the Dubai Natural History Group, and an anonymous reviewer for this journal for their feedback on earlier versions of this essay. I am also indebted to Hassan Tayim, Robert Cook, and the participants in the conference which prompted this article for their organizational efforts and inspiration.

Type
THE PROFESSION
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , October 2006 , pp. 891 - 894
Copyright
© 2006 The American Political Science Association

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