Home is Claiming for Rights: The Moral Economy of Water Provision in Rural Senegal

ABSTRACT

In Senegal, when a borehole breakdown occurs in a community, the “son of the soil” is summoned to help as an informal key alternative to officials appointed by user committees. “Sons” have several points in common: Born in the village, they work as administrative executives in the capital Dakar and are connected to the ruling party. Sons of the soil narratives shed light on a specific “moral economy” in which people born on the same soil, home, have obligations to each other. In consequence, home constitutes a social space that can create its own rules as well as endorse compliance to them. Water absence also stresses the relations connecting rural communities to the state. Sons of the soil narratives are thus a way to explore local conceptions of citizenship.

KEYWORDS:

• Belonging
• citizenship
• moral economy legal pluralism
• senegal
• state
• water access

Acknowledgments

I thank Franz Krause, Veronica Strang, and Kelley Sams, as well as the three anonymous reviewers, for their very insightful comments. All remaining errors are mine.

Notes

Kaolack Region is one of the fourteen administrative regions of Senegal. It is situated in the western–central part of Senegal. Kaolack climate is Sahelian with a rainy season from June to October.

“Ndox ak dunduu ñoo and” in Wolof.

Names of places and people are fictitious.

The term “borehole,” as employed throughout this article, designates as an ensemble both the borehole itself and the motorized pump used to extract water from it.

For wells construction on the national territory see Brasseur (1952).

“Réforme de Gestion des Forages Motorisés Ruraux.”

“L’État n’a pas les moyens.”

In Gomez-Temesio (2014), I introduced several examples of sons’ actions in their respective hometowns. See also Geschiere and Gugler (1998) for a broader perspective on urban–rural linkages.

Rural Hydraulics Department. In charge of building all new facilities.

During the first decades after independence, village chiefs were affiliated to the Socialist Party and as such considered as the local representatives of Dakar’s party executives.

I use the term “Water Ministry” for greater clarity. However, the Rural Hydraulics Department has changed its ministry six times between 1983 and 2012 (see Gomez-Temesio 2014).

He first joined the Socialist Party during Abdou Diouf’s presidency. After the decline of the socialist regime in 2000, he became affiliated with the Ligue Démocratique Mouvement pour le Parti du Travail (LD MPT), whose leader Abdoulaye Bathily became the Water Minister in the new coalition government. When LD MPT left the government, Diouf joined the Parti Démocratique Sénégalais (PDS) of president Abdoulaye Wade. In 2012, shortly after Macky Sall’s victory in the presidential election, he joined the Alliance pour la République (APR).

Originally the LD MPT was a communist-led party.

The “Alternation”: name given to the 2000 presidential elections when the Socialist Party lost the election to a coalition led by PDS leader Abdoulaye Wade.