As the inventor of the word garbology I protest its misuse. What garbology is is the study of famous people's trash - not some college course that is kewl, but does not study celebrity trash. Check garbology.com for more!!!!
Can anybody with access to the on-line OED verify this claim?
(oh, and perfesser, you need to check the spelling on your page title -- unless, of course, "garblogy" is the science of blogging about gar)
I vant to be alone zo I can study.
garbology
[f. GARB(AGE n. + -OLOGY; cf. GARBOLOGIST.]
W. Rathje's term for the scientific study of the refuse of a modern society; the investigation of material discarded by a society considered as an aspect of social science.
1976 National Rev. (U.S.) 6 Feb. 70/2 The..theory behind this garbageology is that if we can learn about ancient peoples by studying their garbage, we can learn even more about present society the same way. 1976 Telegraph (Brisbane) 14 July 30/2 Garbology..is, he [sc. Dr. Rathje] believes, a social science. 1979 Truck & Bus Transportation Jan. 22 (heading) A quick course in advanced garbology. 1982 Times 12 Feb. 17/1 I'm always looking for truth about mankind and its creations, says William Rathje, a professor of garbology, with a Ph.D in anthropology. Rathje and his team search the garbage dumps of the United States... Rathje, who works at a ‘garbage pavilion’ in Tucson, hopes to start a museum of garbology.
[OED2 © 1989]
garbage + -ology -- I can see parallel development, but this seems to specifically pinpoint it.
edit: added copyright info
then again...
*This brand of enthusiasm became notorious in 1970, when the songwriter Bob Dylan physically assaulted A. J. Weberman, an obsessive scholar of Dylan's lyrics, for going through Dylan's Greenwich Village trash can. Nearly thirty years later, Weberman is still stalking Dylan, now in cyberspace, where he asserts that he can get into Dylan's computer (if he has one) and read the latest form of Dylan's trash, deleted files. In California v. Greenwood (1988), the Supreme Court declared that the borders of the household do not encompass the contents of trash cans... Weberman may be found on the [web] at weberman.com, dylanology.com and garbology.com.)
- footnote in Susan Strasser's Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash
although this indicates that the practice began in 1970, it doesn't really tell us when said action was given a name.
[typos mine, copyrighted material]
edit: corrected dylanology.com typo (which site suggests Weberman may have coined the word "Dylanology")
regardless of origin, unless the word is copywrit, there's not much can be done about change of usage. unless you're a die-hard prescrip, na?
welcome to the Board, AJ.
about 6 years ago, I took a multi-disciplinary course through the anthropology department at a major southern university, that examined the various landfills around the town in which it was located; yes, 'garbology' in action... we were grad students from the departments of law, anthro, urban planning, ecology sciences, etc. Each of us looked at various aspects of the history of 'dumping' in our town and we came up with some really interesting stuff: landfill location as social INjustice, nuclear waste (from the school of medicine) as well as reports of stray body parts, effects on the water table, university vs. town power struggles, cover-ups (no pun intended)of some, ummm, things that smelled to high heaven; hey, it was all there, just like looking at pot shards in the desert, only better. The history of garbology is really fun: for example, in very early Boston, when city leaders decided the streets were becoming too filled with trash, manure, etc., they passed a law to clean it up - by sweeping it all into the Bay. Imagine what future generations will find to laugh about (or grimace) when they look back at us.
I did hear once that eating too much lutefisk made Garbo logy.
...for both the OED entry and the interesting Dylan side story.
Tsanks all for the rundown. Anyone know if the term predates its use in the '70's or whther it's a comeback from even earlier times
Mr. Weberman, someone listed in AWADmail Issue 207 knows about you; thought you'd like to know.
