Robin Nagle [Anthropologist]

By: Editor | April 13, 2011 | Ten by Ten

What most of us disregard as trash or rubbish, Dr. Robin Nagle studies as important matter that may reveal a great deal about our world and its future. As New York City’s anthropologist-in-residence with the Department of Sanitation, Nagle explores the vital role of massive waste management and its effect on a city’s political, economic, environmental and social arenas. Although proper trash disposal and overall cleanliness is an elemental aspect of a community’s prosperity, Nagle believes the issue is not credited its deserved importance and protocol. With a doctorate in anthropology from Columbia University, Dr. Nagle has also published several dissertations pertaining to global concerns and social thought.

What do you consider your greatest professional success?
Learning a city from the perspective of the people who keep it alive by picking it up every day.

What technology are you currently the most excited about?
Social media will change our understanding of and connection to the world in ways we can’t yet imagine. Though some critics claim such tools will isolate us into ever smaller and more fragmented interest groups, recent events in the Middle East and here in the U.S. suggest otherwise. Things like Twitter or Facebook or Mawada (a dating site in Libya that protestors used to send coded messages about the uprising) didn’t provoke revolution, but they let people connect and organize more quickly and more effectively in ways that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

When was the last time you were truly frightened and why?
During a race in the Hudson River a few years ago, I noticed that the faster swimmers (and their accompanying kayaks) were far ahead of me, and the slower ones (with their kayaks) were far behind. After I recovered from the giddy notion I might actually be winning - not possible, given my swimming skills - it took me a couple of seconds to realize that I was all by myself in the middle of the Hudson, far from shore and far from help. If I were clonked on the head by a piece of driftwood, or if I cramped up, or if a sea monster grabbed me by the ankle and pulled me under, no one would ever know. I started to panic, but that was a really bad idea, so I took a deep breath, decided that it was an honorable place in which to spend my last moments on Earth and kept swimming.

What did you want to grow up to be when you were a child?
Permanently slightly discontent.

What philanthropic/humanitarian cause do you most identify with and why?
There’s one generic, one global and one specific. The generic: public libraries, because every day they invite the most disparate people imaginable to cross their thresholds and discover the world. The global: Doctors Without Borders, because every day they reach out to people in the most desperate situations imaginable - people often abandoned by any other possibility of aide - and give them a future. The specific: the Miriam Imelda Preschool in Recife, Brazil, because it nourishes the minds, spirits and bodies of nearly 100 children from the poorest neighborhoods of one of the poorest cities in the hemisphere, and it accomplishes this on a budget of only a few thousand dollars a year.

Describe your perfect day?
My perfect day has a balance between headwork and handwork, between solitude and fellowship, and it includes good sleep, good coffee and a good book.

If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be and why?
The list is long, but in most recent history, I’d have the planes of Sept. 11 miss all their targets, land with no loss of life, and let that date be remembered for catastrophes averted, not for the devastation that rewrote our lives.

Do you believe in the notion of spreading democracy beyond our borders?
Here’s a radical notion: What if we tried living up to the ideals on which America was founded? Then we could spread democracy by example instead of by force. A naïve proposal, perhaps, but how do we know it wouldn’t work until we give it a go?

What are the fundamental qualities you look for in a lover?
Can I get back to you on that?

How will you spend this evening?
Tonight I’ll be home with my 11-year-old son. We’ll both do homework (with a break to watch Jeopardy), have dinner and probably have a bout or two of roughhousing before bedtime. He just read this and says it’s a strange routine, but he likes it. I told him I don’t see what’s so strange. Everybody needs a little roughhousing now and then, right? Didn’t I mention that in my perfect day?

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