Embodied Intersectionalities of Urban Citizenship: Water, Infrastructure, and Gender in the Global South

Abstract

Scholars have demonstrated that citizenship is tied to water provision in megacities of the Global South where water crises are extensive and the urban poor often do not have access to public water supplies. Drawing from critical feminist scholarship, this article argues for the importance of analyzing the connections between embodied intersectionalities of sociospatial differences (in this instance, gender, class, and migrant status) and materialities (of water and water infrastructure) and their relational effects on urban citizenship. Empirical research from the largest informal settlement in Dhaka, Bangladesh, as well as surrounding affluent neighborhoods, demonstrates that differences in water insecurity and precarity not only reinforce heightened senses of exclusion among the urban poor but affect their lived citizenship practices, community mobilizations, and intersectional claims-making to urban citizenship, recognition, and belonging through water. Spatial and temporal dimensions of materialities of water and infrastructure intersect with embodiments of gender, class, and migrant status unevenly in the urban waterscape to create differentiated urban citizens in spaces of abjection and dispossession. The article argues that an everyday embodied perspective on intersectionalities of urban citizenship enriches the scholarship on the water–citizenship nexus.

学者们的研究已经证明, 在南半球的大城市中, 公民身份与供水状况息息相关。这些城市中普遍存在水危机, 城市中的穷人往往无法获得公共供水。本文借鉴了批判女权主义的观点, 论证分析以下主题的重要性：社会空间差异所体现的交集性（在本研究案例中为性别、阶级和移民身份差异）与物质性(即水和水基础设施) 之间的联系, 以及它们对城市公民身份的相关影响。本文对孟加拉国达卡最大的临时棚屋区和周围的富裕社区进行了实证研究, 显示出水的不安全性和不稳定性方面的差距, 这些因素不仅让城市穷人感受到了更强烈的被排斥感, 还影响了他们生活中的公民行为、社区动员能力, 以及通过水对相交集的公民权、认可和归属感的要求。在城市水环境中, 水和基础设施物质性的时空维度与具体的性别、阶级和移民身份不均匀地交织在一起, 导致居住在落后和缺乏水资源的区域的城市公民被分化。本文认为, 从具体化的视角观察城市公民的交际性, 可以进一步丰富水资源与公民关系的科学研究。

Los académicos han demostrado que la ciudadanía está ligada al suministro de agua en las megaciudades del Sur Global, donde las crisis hídricas suelen tener dimensiones mayores y donde los pobres urbanos carecen de acceso a la oferta pública de agua. Apoyándose en la erudición feminista crítica, este artículo reivindica la importancia de analizar las conexiones que existen entre las interseccionalidades personalizadas de diferencias socioespaciales (en este caso, género, clase y estatus migratorio) y las materialidades (del agua y de la infraestructura hidrológica), y sus efectos relacionales sobre la ciudadanía urbana. La investigación empírica en los asentamientos informales más grandes de Dhaka, Bangladesh, lo mismo que en los vecindarios pudientes de los alrededores, demuestra que las diferencias en inseguridad y precariedad hídricas no solamente refuerzan entre los urbanitas pobres el sentido aguzado de exclusión, sino que afectan sus prácticas de vivencia ciudadana, movilizaciones comunitarias y los reclamos interseccionales por la reivindicación de la ciudadanía urbana, reconocimiento y pertenencia, en el contexto de los problemas del agua. Las dimensiones espaciales y temporales de las materialidades del agua y de la infraestructura se interceptan de modo desigual con las encarnaciones de género, clase y estatus migratorio en el paisaje hídrico de la ciudad, para crear ciudadanos urbanos diferenciados en espacios de mezquindad y desposeimiento. El artículo sostiene que una perspectiva cotidiana personificada en las interseccionalidades de la ciudadanía urbana enriquece la erudición sobre el nexo agua–ciudadanía.

Key Words:

• citizenship
• embodied
• infrastructure
• intersectionality
• urban
• water

关键词:

• 关键词：公民身份
• 具体化
• 基础设施
• 交叉性
• 城市
• 水

Palabras clave:

• Palabras clave: agua
• ciudadanía
• encarnado
• infraestructura
• interseccionalidad
• urbano

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to four anonymous reviewers for feedback that helped to improve this article and to Annals Section Editor James McCarthy over the multiyear gestation period of the article marred by unforeseen setbacks after the article was first submitted in 2017. Most of all, I am deeply indebted to residents of Korail, Banani, and Gulshan for allowing me access to their lives and stories. I also thank officials of DSK, DWASA, WaterAid, World Bank, BRAC, Dhaka City Corporation, UNICEF, and Dhaka University for their time and assistance. All errors remain mine.

Notes

1 I use the term slum with care, acknowledging its historical baggage as a pejorative or negative term (Gilbert 2007) but aligning with its usage by the well-known global movement by residents of slums, the Shack/Slum Dwellers International.

2 Dhaka is largely homogeneous in race or ethnicity (Bengalis) and religious composition (Muslim) due to the spatioreligious partitioning of South Asia during British colonial rule and postcolonial nationalism. A small percentage of Hindu Bengalis and Christian Bengalis do exist in the country (where religion and caste differences can play intersectional roles) but were not part of this study.

3 Other informal methods such as capturing rainfall in pots and buckets during the monsoon season are common throughout Bangladesh, but generally these entail small amounts of water; no additional infrastructure for rainwater harvesting was observed in Korail.

4 Women are often found to lead community groups created by NGOs for domestic water projects in the Global South due to a mix of international development discourses of gender empowerment (where a woman leading a group is assumed to be empowered) and patriarchal norms of the gender division of labor that make women responsible for domestic water management.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Farhana Sultana

FARHANA SULTANA is Associate Professor of Geography at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include feminist geography, political ecology, critical development studies, water governance, climate justice, and urban citizenship in the Global South.