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

McFarlane, C.; Silver, J.

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Authors

J. Silver



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

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Copyright Statement
This is the accepted version of the following article: McFarlane, C. & Silver, J. (2016). The Poolitical City: “Seeing Sanitation” and Making the Urban Political in Cape Town. Antipode, 49(1): 125-148, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12264. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.





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