The Emergence of “Solidarity Recycling” in Brazil: Structural Convergences and Strategic Actions in Interconnected Fields

Abstract

The relatively good recycling performance in Brazil is associated to material recovery chains involving a huge number of informal waste collectors. Over the past decades, social activists have supported grassroots recycling cooperatives and these organizations have spread around the country becoming consecrated in the National solid waste policy as a legitimate form to organize recycling. This article analyses the emergence of “solidarity recycling” in Brazil, addressing the cultural and political relations and processes that have led to its legitimation. Cross-fertilizing Bourdieu’s sociological approach and the strategic action fields perspective, a qualitative, retrospective, and longitudinal study was conducted using secondary and primary data from various sources. Evidence shows that the emergence of solidarity recycling has resulted from both structural convergences and strategic actions unfolding across multiple fields, indicating the complementarity of the used approaches and the importance of accounting for the interconnection of arenas.