Beads, Bodies, and Trash ─ Public Sex, Global Labor, and the Disposability of Mardi Gras

Beads, Bodies, and Trash merges cultural sociology with a commodity chain analysis by following Mardi Gras beads to their origins. Beginning with Bourbon Street of New Orleans, this book moves to the grim factories in the tax-free economic zone of rural Fuzhou, China. Beads, Bodies, and Trash will increase students’ capacity to think critically about and question everyday objects that circulate around the globe: where do objects come from, how do they emerge, where do they end up, what are their properties, what assemblages do they form, and what are the consequences (both beneficial and harmful) of those properties on the environment and human bodies? This book also asks students to confront how the beads can contradictorily be implicated in fun, sexist, unequal, and toxic relationships of production, consumption, and disposal. With a companion documentary, Mardi Gras Made in China, this book introduces students to recording technologies as possible research tools.

David Redmon, Ph.D. is a Lecturer in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent at Canterbury. He has produced, directed, edited and photographed Mardi Gras: Made in China (2005), Kamp Katrina (2007), Intimidad (2008), Invisible Girlfriend (2009), Girl Model (2011), Downeast (2012), Kingdom of Animal (2012), Night Labor (2013), and Choreography (2014). Redmon’s intimate and intricately crafted documentaries have premiered at Sundance, Toronto, and Viennale Film Festivals and have won a variety of awards. Redmon’s work has aired on PBS, POV, BBC, CBC, DR, ARTE, NHK, and other television stations throughout the world. Redmon received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University at Albany, State University of New York and is an alumni of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University and Harvard University’s Film Studies Center.