An index of waste: humanitarian design, “dignified living” and the politics of infrastructure in Cape Town

Abstract

This article develops a framework for thinking about waste as an index that signals a relational position within contested, historically layered conceptions of human order. It follows two contrasting frameworks for thinking about sanitation infrastructure: a quest to redesign the toilet at a global level for underserved populations, and popular conceptions of rights, citizenship and dignity grounded in the materiality of infrastructure in post-apartheid South Africa. By integrating highly abstract understandings of value with intimately embodied qualities of experience, the problem of sanitation simultaneously connects and divides human populations. It unites them at a species level, only to distinguish them at a social one. From this perspective, human waste is hardly a neutral substance, defined by its chemical properties. Rather, waste actively registers relational human status and position within a political ecology of needs.