Biopolitics of water supply and sanitation (I)

Hello again, reader! End of term is approaching fast, and so does the end of this blog, sadly! For my remaining two posts, I want to adopt a bio-political perspective on water supply and sanitation (WSS) in Africa. This post will give a general overview, and I will then focus on case-studies in urban areas in the next one.

Michel Foucault, source:
https://www.nytimes.com/
2018/02/08/books/michel-foucault-new-book.html 

You may be wondering, "but what is biopolitics?" - let me explain it to you now. The concept was coined by French philosopher Michel Foucault who lived in the 20th century. According to Foucault, biopolitics appeared in the 19th century when power seized control of life itself; it is a type of power that is "technologically and politically" able "not only to manage life but to make it proliferate, to create living matter, to build the monster, and, ultimately, to build viruses that cannot be controlled and that are universally destructive" (Foucault, 1976). This might seem a bit mysterious, but believe me, it is extremely relevant to understand today's politics, especially as regards WSS in Africa. From the 19th century onwards, authorities like states have gained control over individual bodies (through surveillance for instance) and over the human species: in line with the rapid scientific progress, states have gotten involved in birth, death and illness control (think of natalist policies for instance). In so doing, new norms of hygiene were created, notably regarding water, "in order to secure the health and productivity of the population" (Bakker, 2013). These norms contribute to what Foucault calls "racism" (he connects it to Nazism) i.e. the division between "what must live and what must die, the definition of an internal "biological threat" within the population, that must be excluded from the rest: insofar biopolitics creates new forms of social marginalization, not necessarily based on "race" but also on spatial, social or economic criteria. In summary, the main motivation of an authority (a state,  but also, in the African case, the international community and international aid providers) behind bio-politics is to assert and to strengthen the authority's power by providing health, longevity and productivity, which are means of guaranteeing long-term peace and security as well as of controlling people at individual and societal level.

As noted by Panagiota and Saravanan (2017), the literature on water bio-politics usually tends to avoid asking who truly benefits from sanitation improvement projects. Yet, as stated before, when norms of hygiene are defined, the population is divided between those who "comply" with these norms, and those who don't. Norms are legitimized if they enhance the value of some social groups - and by automatic opposition, if they label others as unworthy. Insofar, WSS policies produce discourses of stigma and blame (Panagiota & Saravanan, 2017). Examples of this in Africa will be covered in the next post. 

Children collecting water in Bwaise slum, Uganda. Credits: Benedicte Desrus/WaterAid 

Moreover, water is a basic need that is essential for life. Hence, if some groups don't have access to clean water, not only does it mean they are marginalized: symbolically, it also means governments (or institutions in charge of WSS projects) are refusing to acknowledge their presence. In other words, these people are denied access to citizenship. Not to mention the fact that without access to a basic need like water, it is extremely hard to exert one's political rights. As Bakker (2013) states it, access to water is the material emblem and the cultural signifier of access to citizenship; it is a "precondition to participation in public life". Still, WSS projects aim to be cost-efficient, which means they tend to target wealthier rather than poorer customers, and thereby end up not actually benefiting "public" health (Bakker, 2013). In a way, these consequences can be viewed as a perverse effect of (bio)-politics: divide et impera, divide and rule.

The recent outbreak of cholera in Zimbabwe exemplifies some of these issues. Firstly, some neighborhoods, more than others, were hit by the disease. These areas are among the poorest, i.e the ones lacking access to properly hygienic conditions and clean water. Secondly, there are fears that newly elected President Mnangagwa's government may not stay very long in power, and that cholera may undermine the country's political and economic stability (News24, 2018). 

Residents of Harare, the capital-city of Zimbabwe, fetching water during the cholera crisis, 17 September 2018. Credits: EPA-EFE AARO, https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-09-20-cholera-outbreak-takes-toll-on-poor-and-overpopulated-urban-communities-in-harare/ 

Both these problems (the unequal distribution of waterborne diseases, and the (potentially lacking) political control of specific groups of people) fall into the realm of bio-politics. Ultimately, the question of water supply and sanitation is a matter of power and control. Differences in access to water prefigure differences in access to society. But also, most importantly, they impact people's quality of life. Water is a matter of life or death. Perhaps this is really why water is intrinsically bio-political: as Foucault (1976) so rightly said, mastering bio-politics means mastering the power to "'make live' and 'let die'".

Sarah Champagne