Voices, clues, numbers: Roaming among waste in Campania

A region in the Italian South, Campania comprises five provinces: Avellino, Benevento, Caserta, Salerno, and Naples, with a total population of almost 6 million people. While the prosecutors hoped to stop the flourishing of the waste trade, the main result of the shutdown was an unfortunate interruption in urban waste collection. In 1994, having realized that regional authorities were unable to implement a waste management plan, the national government declared a 'state of emergency' and created an ad hoc executive agency, the Commissariat for Waste Emergency in Campania (CWE). In the case of Campania, the suspension of regular procurement procedures and environmental regulations, the social embitterment that followed repression, and a rhetorical dispositive marked by a sense of urgency and receptivity toward nonpartisan expertise have all facilitated corporate expansion and the related transfer of funds from the public to the private sectors.