"A book that brings dignity to people otherwise considered marginal and reveals a progressive potential in work otherwise considered 'rubbish.'" — Dagna Rams, LSE Review of Books
"Rich in ethnographic detail and theoretically engaging, Reclaiming the Discarded will surely find a receptive audience in graduate seminars and upper-year undergraduate courses on economic anthropology or the anthropology of work." — Stephen Campbell, American Anthropologist
"The end result is a thought-provoking and pleasurable read that will be of value to scholars and students with an interest in Brazil and Latin America, economic anthropology, globalization, and urban anthropology." — Gustavo S. Azenha, American Ethnologist
"The book is well written. Moreover, the descriptions and analyses of how she and other novices become catadores are pedagogic and Kathleen M. Millar manages to bring the reader into the materiality of the work as a catador." — Karin Skil, Bulletin of Latin American Research
"Reclaiming the Discarded offers rich theoretical and empirical insights into the dynamics of work in the informal sector under the conditions of neoliberal capitalism." — Ajnesh Prasad and Paulina Segarra, Organization
"[Reclaiming the Discarded] is an excellent example of what anthropologists do best. Methodologically, it is an ethnography that stands on its own. . . . Textually, the book is a beautiful read from start to finish: clear, concise and full of colour and life. Beyond the prose, the narrative itself shines, as Millar clearly formed deep and meaningful relationships with catadores and the people living around Jardim Gramacho." — Kirsten Francescone, Anthropologica
“This beautifully written ethnography captures the daily living and precarious lives of impoverished workers and how they manage to be creative in spite of the harsh economic context. Daily problems permeate these lives, but there is also a celebration of life. This wonderful book is hard to put down, and its subject is new and freshly presented.” — Donna M. Goldstein, author of Laughter Out of Place: Race, Class, Violence, and Sexuality in a Rio Shantytown
“Through a narrative built around a constellation of persons and objects, Jardim Gramacho comes alive in this gripping ethnography of garbage-reclaiming work and life in Rio's urban periphery. Kathleen M. Millar resists facile explanations of life in the dump, opting instead to closely listen to her interlocutors' stories, find value in literal interpretations of their words, and take ambivalences and contradictions not as calls for authoritative intervention but as invitations to inhabit the subtleties and complexities of their formidable social world. Reclaiming the Discarded is beautifully written and its argument disrupts truisms that sustain whole fields of inquiry.” — Daniella Gandolfo, author of The City at Its Limits: Taboo, Transgression, and Urban Renewal in Lima