‘Environmental Akalism’ and the War on Filth: The Personification of Sanitation in Urban Nigeria

Abstract

In Nigerian cities, as across much of Africa, sanitation practices at zone, ward and street levels inscribe – in patterns of circulation and interaction around waste – not only the hopes and fears of urban residents and managers, but also the aspirations and failures encoded in colonial and post-colonial national and regional histories. Adjusting to numerous challenges – the interplay of racist colonial zoning strategies, rapid post-colonial urban expansion, the withdrawal of public services amid the liberalization programmes of the 1980s, the increasingly abject character of the social contract, and the ongoing tenuousness of economic life and activity – urban environmental sanitation in Nigeria has long struggled to keep pace with the historical dynamics of the country's emergent metropolises. Following the activities of a cohort of inspectors and volunteers at the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources, Oyo State, this article examines the politics of performance and coercion surrounding the monthly observance of Environmental Sanitation Day in Ibadan amid the heightened political tensions of the electoral season in 2011.

Seeking Incorporation? Voluntary Labor and the Ambiguities of Work, Identity, and Social Value in Contemporary Kenya

“…Developmental opportunities now emerge from uneasy partnerships among state, transnational, and nongovernmental actors (Ferguson 2006). African citizens may yearn to be part of a public of care and protection, to be bearers of civic rights and responsibilities and participate in developmental futures, but the opportunities, trajectories, and institutional forms that connect them to such destinations are uncertain, transient, and precarious (Geissler et al 2013; Manton 2013; Prince 2013a, 2013b; Tousignant 2013). “Incorporation” thus remains elusive and is fraught with ambiguity and tension.…”

Framing Local Attitudes to a Modern Health Intervention in the Neoliberal Order – Culturalism and Malaria Control in Southeastern Nigeria

“…Widespread economic and environmental practices in Nigeria such as poor waste management (Manton, 2013; Mbah and Nzeadibe, 2016); poor regulation of housing and construction patterns (see, for example, Prince, 2014); takeover of lands by government – often in cahoots with big transnational capital– for mining, industry and other practices that disrupt natural ecology (see, for example, Last, 2014; Webb and Gilles-Vernick, 2013) have combined to forge an environment conducive for the easy survival of mosquitoes in huge numbers. However, as Behague (2014) would argue, it is convenient for the authorities to sidestep the political responsibility for these overarching structural variables and rather focus intervention efforts on the ordinary people in a way that frames the people as ultimately responsible for the success or failure of intervention.…”

“… 3. See, for example, Geissler (2011, 2015), Last (2014), Manton (2013), Ombongi (2011), Prince (2014), Schumaker (2011), Whyte (2011) …”

Refiguring transnational intervention: Ethnographic example from the Roll Back Malaria initiative in an African community

“…These sorts of concerns are fueled at local levels by the neoliberal wave, which urges that people take as much personal gain as they can from any ventures they are connected with (Geissler, 2015). Given the reduction of the overarching welfare state, especially in the South (Geissler, 2015; Manton, 2013), there are heightened local concerns to leverage whatever such modern interventions as the RBM initiative had on offer for personal and (at some half-hearted level) group advancement. Below, I briefly narrate some ways in which negotiations for connection to this external world, through the RBM initiative, are performed among villagers in Nsukka.…”

“…2. See, for example, Ferguson (1994), Geissler (2011), Ombongi (2011), Manton (2013), Schumaker (2011), Last (2014), Prince (2014), and Whyte (2014).…”