5. How can involvement in sanitation & water infrastructure facilitate political participation?

“Control of water is inevitably control of life and livelihood” (Ward, 1997)

Water is a metaphor for social, economic and political relations within society. It can be taken as a barometer for the sharing of identity and resources between power dichotomies. Water being fundamentally at the heart of sustaining any life form facilitates its role in power relations; those with control over water have control over social life. Strang (2004) posits that where a state possesses jurisdiction over water infrastructures, the peak of disenfranchisement between state and society can be found. Throughout the Anthropocene in pre-developed society (pre-developed in this sense relating to modern European notions of development) women possess authority and responsibility for the collection of water and the materiality of water engenders their role as life bearers. Where technological advancement began to assume responsibility for water collection, the intimate relation between the female concept of life-bearing female and the materiality of water began to lose its importance. The gender shift from the female to male domain marks the beginning of the commercialisation of water as an exchangeable good and market force. Hereby relating control of water to control of social life, a historical study of water resource management reveals a pattern of lost agency in society. The move to dominating hierarchical control of resources as opposed to community self-carried resources represents the increasing presence/power of the state in society. (ibid, 2004)

The adoption of infrastructure as a method for political analysis is at the centre of a growing multi-disciplinary field crossing urban geography, material and social anthropology, health studies, among others. The material culture of infrastructure is an emerging ontological approach to political theory, extracting notions of power from Western hegemonic ideals of hierarchy (such as capitalism, class, states) to a more integrated and network-based approach towards analysing power relations. By placing objects critical to the make up of society (i.e. such as infrastructure, water management) one recognises the way in which relationships between state and society manifest themselves. This is seen in the expectations of a society regarding government provision of infrastructure, as well as any hopes or desires for reform a population might have. Where citizens are dissatisfied with existing political relations, grassroots based infrastructural development offers a means of reimagining possibilities for state-society relations. (Knox, 2017)

Returning to the theme of public health, Chalfin’s (2014) case study in Ghana elucidates state-society relations through built environment of public toilets. The analysis of this area of sociality marks a concrete urban geography for people to interact with local politics and reclaim political participation. Excretion is in itself a private act but is made public when one considers its intrinsic relation to public health. Citizens located in slum or poor urban areas are often discounted in political life, yet the use of such a state-run facility enables citizens to make demands of their government where they were previously unseen in the political eye. This mode of public participation is replicated in Chaplin’s (2011) accounting infrastructural inequality in Indian slums to colonial legacy and post colonial influences. During the British colonial state, the construction of military barracks with ample sanitation services and architecture adhering to public health policy created a segregation of sanitary services where Western and native middle class areas were constructed to keep out slum-based Indians who were excluded from accessing basic sanitation infrastructure. Furthermore following the end of the Colonial period, Chaplin posits that new political movements vied for support for poorer populations and thereby led to the gross misjudgement of resource allocation according to gaining political traction as opposed to technical methodologies. The relationship between colonial legacy and poor sanitation and infrastructure can also be applied to the African continent where European powers continue to shape everyday African society. 

Figure 1. (Wikipedia, 2019)

Colonial legacy in Africa is demonstrated through the existence of the bifurcated state, in which a country consists of one state for white European settlers and another for indigenous African peoples. The former finds its power basis in developed urban areas, and the latter in rural populations in the form of tribal power structures (Mamdani, 1996). Although Mamdani’s idea of state division referred originally to racially based class structure, the legacy of class segregation between native middle and lower classes in post colonial African states continues to follow such a political structure. Such a division is made explicit in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott. 

Mauritania became a French colony from 1920 until 1960, the population evolved from being mainly nomadic to the uptake of urban life in Nouakchott due to successive droughts which constitute a nomadic existence unfeasible. After Mauritanian independence the region saw decades of political unrest in the form of military coups, ethnic clashes and frequent cabinet changes. Oil shocks and declining iron prices during the 1970’s and 80’s led to economic reform in order to achieve macroeconomic stability, alongside poverty reduction programmes (UN, 2010). The majority of the country consists of arid desert, 50% of the population is found in and surrounding Nouakchott with smaller sects near the borders of Mali and Senegal. National GDP revolves around crude and natural ore extraction, with a small export of fish, although 50% of the labor force works in agriculture; suggesting a high concentration of wealth into a small power base (CIA, 2019). Within Nouakchott itself, access to water and sanitation services depend on wealth category; middle class suburbs enjoy access to piped water yet those based in newly formed shanty towns are forced to buy water by the bucket from private sellers.

Political power in Mauritania has long been based around control of resources along racial and tribal groups, with several of the black ethnic groups and ex-slave groups discriminated against economically and politically. 

Figure 3: created with data from (CIA, 2019)

Over half of the population live under the poverty line and political participation seems impossible to access for some due to ethnic alignment. Furthermore the abolishment of slavery arrived only in 2007 and an estimated 20% of the population continue to live in slavery (World Population Review, 2019). 

So as a country with limited physical access to water resource, political and economic instability, what can be done to overcome the lack of political participation? 

The very act of entering a politically entrenched space such as a public bathroom forces citizens' entrance into  the political sphere and to begin to interact with questions surrounding the role of government and the interaction between state and society. Through this post I have attempted to demonstrate that participation in sanitation and water infrastructure can act as an enabler for political participation. In the case of Mauritania, if for example grassroots sanitation projects were to emerge, this could put an end to ethnically segregated political life.