In this talk, Colin McFarlane and Jonathan Silver will reflect on their past work in Mumbai and their new research on the politicisation of sanitation in Cape Town, with particular reference to the ‘poo protests’.
Colin will reflect on his work in the politics of sanitation in Mumbai’s informal settlements. He will draw out some key processes through which sanitation is organised in Mumbai, and the politics around that, as well highlighting some of the theoretical challenges the research presented for thinking about infrastructure and other strands of urban theory.
He will also briefly reflect on emerging work on the politics of sanitation in Cape Town. Their aim is to deepen understanding of how sanitation is politicised in cities, and to contribute to debate and ongoing work on sanitation politics in Cape Town. The objectives are to: examine why and how the ‘poo protests’ emerged in Cape Town; investigate why they took the form that they did; and contextualise the protests in the wider debates about service delivery, urban politics, and social justice in Cape Town. They will conduct the research through interviews with a range of relevant actors including residents, civil society groups, municipal officials, academics and political parties. The research builds on McFarlane’s work in India on the politics of urban sanitation, and Silver’s work on the politics of urban infrastructure in South Africa. These previous research projects examined often ignored everyday experiences of sanitation and infrastructure and used the findings in discussions with municipal officials and civil society groups.
Colin McFarlane is an urban geographer whose work focusses on the experience and politics of informal neighbourhoods. This has involved research into the relations between informality, infrastructure and knowledge in urban India and elsewhere. A key part of this has been a focus on the experience and politics of sanitation in informal settlements in Mumbai, which was part of an Economic and Social Research Council ethnographic project on the everyday cultures and contested politics of sanitation and water in two informal settlements. His current work examines the politicisation of informal neighbourhoods in comparative perspective, including African and South Asian cities.