Empire of Scrounge: Inside the Urban Underground of Dumpster Diving, Trash Picking, and Street Scavenging

Jeff Ferrell

ISBN 0814727387

256 pages

Paperback

Alternative Criminology

Publication date: 12/1/2005

When Jeff Ferrell quit his job as a tenured professor, moved back to his hometown of Ft. Worth, Texas, and found himself with a place to live but no real income, he began an eight-month odyssey of essentially living off of the street. Empire of Scrounge tells the story of this unusual journey into the often illicit worlds of scrounging, recycling, and second-hand living. Richly illustrated throughout, Empire of Scrounge is both a personal story and a larger tale about the changing values of American society. Perhaps nowhere else are the fault lines of inequality reflected so clearly as at the curbside trash can, where one person's garbage becomes another's bounty. 

“A firecracker of a book. Prepare yourself for total immersion. It reads like Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell with a sense of fun; it has all the detail and magic of James Agee. A pleasure to read: anarchic, irreverent and totally relevant.”

--Jock Young, co-editor of The New Politics of Crime and Punishment

“Outstandingly well written, gripping, and hugely entertaining¬. Destined to become a classic, this anarchy of consumerism turns one man’s ‘trash’ into a treasure: an insightful, colorful, imaginative and playful window on the underground economy of scavenging for a living among other people’s cast offs.”

--Stuart Henry, co-author of Essential Criminology

“In Empire of Scrounge, Jeff Ferrell serves as an unassuming guide into the netherworld of our own garbage. Ferrell suggests that such urban prospecting is possibly far more than simple recycling--it is a form of politics that consciously opts out of a vapid consumer culture. It’s a must read!”

--Meda Chesney-Lind, co-editor of Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment

“I love this book! It’s engaging, witty, and jarring--every page is filled with new treasures and powerful analyses of our throwaway culture. Ferrell opens a rare and vivid window on the raw aftermath of our society’s conspicuous consumption and wasteful behavior, and he offers real possibilities for reflection, meditation, and redemption.”

--David Naguib Pellow, author of Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago

“By turns moving, funny, and shocking. Particularly sobering are the book's implications for modern consumer life, and the incomprehensible amounts of junk, waste and surplus generated by a modern city.”

--Philip Jenkins, author of Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of Eighties America

Jeff Ferrell is Professor in the Department of Sociology, Criminal Justice, and Anthropology at Texas Christian University and is the author most recently of Tearing Down the Streets: Adventures in Urban Anarchy.