If any academician has a right to deny the “ivory tower” stereotype, it is Jeff Farrell. A former tenured professor at Northern Arizona University, Farrell quit his job and spent eight months exploring the world of dumpster diving. Last Friday in the Public Affairs Center, he spoke to students about his findings from both a sociological and, surprisingly, an existential perspective.

Farrell, who now teaches at Texas Christian University, left Northern Arizona in December of 2001 armed with a passionate curiosity, a warm Southern accent, and no form of income. Farrell immersed himself in the world of what he likes to call “urban scrounging,” and published his findings in a book entitled “Empire of Scrounge: Inside the Urban Underground of Dumpster Diving, Trash Picking, and Street Scavanging.”

“Diving into dumpsters was pleasurable,” he said. “I also dress better now than I ever have in my life.”

Farrell recounted how he had found unopened books, shoes with the tissue paper still inside them, clothes with the tags still dangling, and a brand new bike.

“Grocery stores will throw away 50 oranges because one is moldy,” he said. “Ninety-five percent of the things I found were neither smelly nor foul.”

But according to Farrell, waste is no accident.

“We rely on the endless production of goods,” he said. “Part of what drives our society is consumption and hyper-consumption.”

In other words, the remnants of our over-consumption, while wasteful, are crucial to the continuation of the economy as we know it.

“These dumpsters have to be filled with goods,” he said. “Not worn out products either.”

Heaps of waste are sorted out and significantly decreased by unpaid volunteers, the decomposers of our capitalist habitat. According to Farrell, the homeless are not the only people salvaging excess: low-wage workers, artists, and dump-truck driving scrap-haulers also rely on dumpster diving in order to live.

“I was surprised at how many other groups were living out of the dumpsters,” Farrell said. “Not only is there this world that we don’t notice…but this world has a variety of characters in it.”

Contrary to popular belief, he said, urban scroungers are not ravenous deviants.

“There is a remarkable code of honor at the trash piles,” he said.

He reported that the first person to a pile is given temporary rights to the territory and that scroungers often share what they find.

“There is a sense of cooperating in this alternative enterprise,” Farrell said. “In all my experience urban scroungers were folks not interested in criminal activity—they look at the beggars as the real deviants.”

But, to Farrell’s chagrin, it seems police and other law enforcement officials have taken issue with a community that he sees as harmless, if not extremely important to the environment.

“It is clear that the legal impetus is towards making scrounging illegal,” he said.

According to Farrell, many local politicians in urban areas, such as former Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani, have only pushed poverty out of public view. Instead of looking to eliminate poverty, they force the poor to the cities’ peripheries.

“The alleged purpose is cleaner neighborhoods and safer cities,” he said.

Farrell sees a national trend of “symbolic cleansing” and the elimination of “visual nuisances.” He cited the evolution of Times Square from a red-light district to a “Disney-ified” tourist magnet. Farrell claimed anything that hinders the image of a high-end, clean, safe society is becoming increasingly criminalized.

This trend has manifested itself in the creation of the code ranger, he said. Code rangers enforce local ordinances such as the banning of shopping carts in public and the restriction of tag sales. One Texas church doing outreach services to poor immigrants was shut down because it had not followed proper tag sale regulations, he said.

Brendan O’Connell ’08, an active dumpster diver, approved of the talk.

“It was a valid analysis,” he said. “Dumpster diving is more about crafting viable alternatives to the capitalist alternatives than just attacking it…their existence is an attack, though.”

Farrell, who said he was trying hard not to romanticize his findings, ultimately found spiritual clarity.

“These people taught me to slow the hell down,” he said. “I found not only all I needed materially, but all I needed existentially. Every day was a day of unmapped space.”