The Poolitical City: “Seeing Sanitation” and Making the Urban Political in Cape Town

McFarlane, C.; Silver, J.

Abstract

In an urbanizing world, the inequalities of infrastructure are increasingly politicized in ways that reconstitute the urban political. A key site here is the politicization of human waste. The centrality of sanitation to urban life means that its politicization is always more than just service delivery. It is vital to the production of the urban political itself. The ways in which sanitation is seen by different actors is a basis for understanding its relation to the political. We chart Cape Town’s contemporary sanitation syndrome, its condition of crisis, and the remarkable politicization of toilets and human waste in the city’s townships and informal settlements in recent years. We identify four tactics— poolitical tactics—that politicize not just sanitation but Cape Town itself: poo protests, auditing, sabotage, and blockages. We evaluate these tactics, consider what is at stake, and chart possibilities for a more just urban future.

Citation

McFarlane, C., & Silver, J. (2017). The Poolitical City: “Seeing Sanitation” and Making the Urban Political in Cape Town. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 49(1), 125-148. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12264

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 26, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Jul 27, 2016
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Apr 27, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 27, 2018
• Journal: Antipode
• Print ISSN: 0066-4812
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-8330
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 49
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 125-148
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12264
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1406025