Disorderly Dakar: The cultural politics of household waste in Senegal's capital city

Abstract

During the era of President Abdoulaye Wade, a household waste crisis periodically held the streets of Dakar in its noxious grip. This paper analyses the crisis in light of waste management's role as a fundamental urban public service, key employment sector, and visceral symbol of the city's management. It examines how the institutional landscape of waste management took centre stage in a power struggle within the state that centred on reconfiguring the labour of ordering the city. At the same time, it reveals how the waste-workers' union emerged as one of the most visible and savvy labour movements in contemporary Senegal. Through the creative disorder unleashed by intentional acts of dirtying, workers and residents alike forged new claims to the city. Conclusions are drawn for the wider implications of the disorderly city for the urban question in Dakar and the landscape of citizenship in Senegal's contemporary period.

Infrastructural Discontent in the Sanitary City: Waste, Revolt, and Repression in Cairo

“…Recent studies of waste have not only drawn attention to an often-overlooked object, but have also driven new avenues of inquiry in diverse fields from the history of capitalism (Gidwani and Reddy 2011) and environmental justice (Dillon 2013) to urbanization (Fredericks 2013;Melosi 1999) and social movements and labor (Liboiron 2012;Moore 2008;Pikner and Jahiainen 2014). Moore (2012: 2) argues that while these literatures are disparate, spanning multiple approaches, they share a common concern with: "what waste is and how, why, and to whom it matters".…”

“…Inspired by waste's capacity to disrupt, urban geographers have explored the politics of waste through events such as garbage strikes, cleanup campaigns, and protests (Pikner and Jauhiainen 2014). These studies have shown how waste is mobilized to contest an array of repressive urban orders around the world including: uneven development in Oaxaca (Moore 2008), economic inequality in and beyond New York City (Liboiron 2012), labor in Dakar (Fredericks 2013(Fredericks , 2018, and urban segregation in Cape Town (McFarlane and Silver 2016).…”

What type of problem is waste in Egypt?

“…Consistent with the religious sociology of the Zabbaleen profession, the neighbourhood where the school is located is predominantly Christian. This important point provides an opportunity to relativise the ‘Islamicness’ of the cleanliness discourse with respect to waste (see also Fredericks , : 534), which despite its religious inflection I would resist essentialising as a feature of Islam, and prefer to regard as a cross‐cutting theme in Egypt.…”

“…Crang and Gregson ), waste is being worked on by anthropologists in many settings (Reno ), including Arab‐majority societies (outstanding work of the previous generation includes Jolé (, ); more recent examples, McKee () and Winegar ()), where several recent events underscore its particular significance: the 2016 ban on the production and distribution of plastic shopping bags in Morocco; the ‘trash crisis’ in Beirut, with its iconic images of rivers of waste broadcast on international media; the importance of trash clean up as a process of ‘aesthetic ordering’ after the Egyptian revolution (Winegar , ); or the public accumulations of waste that have proliferated in Tunisia, indexing post‐revolutionary political upheaval (dissolution of local councils previously responsible for waste management; falling budgets; public sector employment reform). Events such as these gather publics, telescoping seemingly local problems into vast movements of political contestation by instantiating state neglect (Fredericks ), bear witness to infrastructural collapse and transformation toward what geographers have termed ‘people as infrastructure’ (Simone ) and anthropologists ‘vital infrastructures of trash’ (Fredericks ), and underpin economies (Alexander and Reno ) as waste becomes a focus for coping tactics and labour in the context of financial crisis, leading to a rise in scavenging and informal recycling activities as well as innovative cultures of repair and reuse, as people seek to rekindle the value in discarded things and prolong objects’ usefulness beyond their usual lifespans.…”

The Urbanization of the Sanitation Crisis: Placing Waste in the City

“…The third area of research tracks the role of sanitation infrastructures and toilets in shaping notions of public and private and of hygiene (Molotch, ; Penner, ), including the ways in which these systems produce urban government, public health discourses and even cities themselves (Chakrabarty, ; Joyce, ; Kaviraj, ; McFarlane, ; Melosi, ). Fourth, there is a vast literature examining the working conditions, lives, socialities, economies and politics of informal waste recyclers, often in cities in the global South (Aparcana, ; Fredericks, , ). Finally, there is a body of work that explores not the social constructivism of waste but rather its materialities (Grosz, ; Reno, ).…”