Maintenance Space: The Political Authority of Garbage in Kampala, Uganda

Forum: Russia, Europe and the colonial present: the power of everyday geopolitics

“…Curley (2021) sees infrastructures, along with legal and political factors, as part and parcel of possible marginalization and deprivation of Indigenous Peoples (IPs) on their native lands. Doherty (2019) goes even further, introducing the term "infrastructural violence" with regard to colonization of Indigenous Peoples. For historical and contemporary Russia, however, scholars have only recently started to apply the concept of infrastructural violence for understanding social realities.…”

Motorcycle taxis, personhood, and the moral landscape of mobility

“…The KCCA's effort took place at a time when its own legitimacy was already in question./ It had come into being controversially through an act of parliament that stripped the elected mayor of his powers and replaced him with a presidentially appointed technocrat wielding executive power over planning, budgeting, and policy in the city (Doherty, 2019). The registration was one of an array of early initiatives undertaken by the KCCA to consolidate its authority by cleaning up the city.…”

Towards a care perspective on waste: A new direction in discard studies

“…Forced eviction and displacement in the name of cleaning the city uproots people such as slum dwellers and homeless people, who are seen as endangering the project of modernisation, for the sake of urban development (Boo, 2012;Doron and Raja, 2015). These cleaning campaigns and waste management practices constitute a system of 'governance through waste', which segmentalises and hierarchises citizens, branding a specific marginalised social group as waste generators who imperil the state's development plans (Doherty, 2019a;Furniss, 2017;Fredericks, 2018). Thus, a so-called environmental campaign can be utilised by the state and elite members from a certain class or caste to achieve their political project of making responsible citizens (Doron, 2016).…”

“…Thus, a so-called environmental campaign can be utilised by the state and elite members from a certain class or caste to achieve their political project of making responsible citizens (Doron, 2016). By advocating and maintaining cleanliness, these campaigns eliminate ‘unhygienic’ populations, enabling the local government to establish authority and extend power over the city (Doherty, 2019a; Fredericks, 2018).…”

“…Anthropologists have elucidated how the practice of care is constantly entwined with control and discipline (Johnson and Lindquist, 2020; cf. Doherty, 2019a). Notably, Rose (2007), following a Foucauldian framework, observes the rise of ‘vital politics’, in which citizenship is configured based on biology and health technology, and techniques of control and management are increasingly developed to shape and reshape the experience of selfhood and life.…”