March 4, 2013
'Dr. Garbage' Studies Unsung Local Tribe
New York
Robin Nagle's title at New York University—clinical associate professor of anthropology and urban studies—doesn't exactly strike fear in the hearts of men. But that green-and-black windbreaker she's wearing over several warm layers this chilly morning? That's another matter altogether. It's the style reserved for chiefs of New York City's Department of Sanitation, and white capital letters across the back spell out "DSNY ANTHROPOLOGIST."
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As a subject of anthropological research, DSNY is only a little more unusual than, say, a lost tribe in a remote rain forest, though it's more convenient—Manhattan 2, for instance, picks up around NYU. And certainly the department's rules and customs are as mysterious to the average New Yorker as those of, say, the Aleuts or the Swartzentruber Amish. Even so, Ms. Nagle's agent shopped her book around twice before Farrar, Straus and Giroux warily signed on for a revised version. It seems that marketing departments are as uneasy around manuscripts about sanitation workers as the public is around the workers themselves.
That is, in the end, the book's most telling point: Unlike police officers and firefighters endlessly celebrated as "first responders," sanitation workers are looked down upon. And that's when they are noticed at all, which they often are not—they work the avenues and streets as visible as ghosts and as honored as pickpockets. That is true, Ms. Nagle notes, even though sanitation workers are many times more likely to be killed while on the job than cops or firemen are. Working in traffic is dangerous, as are the collection trucks with their powerful compacting blades. Collecting refuse is, by one estimate, the fourth-riskiest career a person could pick (after fishing, logging, and piloting planes).
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