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THE POLITICS OF FILTH: SANITATION, WORK, AND COMPETING MORALITIES IN URBAN MADAGASCAR 1890s–1977

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2019

TASHA RIJKE-EPSTEIN
TASHA RIJKE-EPSTEIN*
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University
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Abstract

This article tracks the historical processes that shaped human waste management practices in Majunga, Madagascar from the city's founding in the mid-eighteenth century to contemporary times. Moving beyond colonial urban histories of sanitation, this article charts the meanings, strategies, and work practices Majunga residents employed to deal with predicaments of waste in everyday life. I argue that the particular material configuration of the colonial sanitation infrastructure in Majunga required new forms of labor — especially maintenance work — which city dwellers evaluated through existing moral norms. With the construction of French colonial sanitation infrastructures and the new labor regimes they necessitated, waste management became a key vector through which notions of difference were negotiated over the early- to mid-twentieth century. Shifting emphasis away from colonial infrastructure as disparity and onto moments of reception can contribute fresh insights not only on the histories of African cities, but also to histories of technology in the Global South.

Keywords

Mahajanga [Majunga]Madagascarurban spacecolonialismwastesanitation technologylabor
Type
Cultural histories in the archives of colonial reform
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , July 2019 , pp. 229 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

Acknowledgements: Research for this article was supported by a Fulbright-Hays Research Fellowship, the University of Michigan, and the Foreign Language Enhancement Program Fellowship. The author gratefully acknowledges Gillian Feeley-Harnik, Gabrielle Hecht, Pier Larson, Pedro Monaville, Moses Ochonu, Derek Peterson, Keith Breckenridge, and anonymous reviewers for The Journal of African History who provided invaluable comments on earlier versions of this article. All maps were produced by Daniel Tanner. My greatest debts are to David Epstein, Ben Houssen, Battouli Benti, and Ben-Taoaby and residents in Mahajanga who contributed their insightful perspectives. Author's email: [email protected].

References

1 Majunga is the colonial name for the city, which was changed to Mahajanga in the independence era. Throughout this article, I employ ‘Majunga’ when referring to colonial era and ‘Mahajanga’ for post-independence times.

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4 Dromigny et al, ‘Emergence and rapid spread’, 2002. Some, however maintained that these efforts at ‘prevention’ inadvertently hastened the spread of cholera. The routine and extensive administration of doxycycline at the sanitation border, as well as in hospitals and clinics, had the unforeseen and grave consequence of triggering the spread of tetracycline-resistant strains of cholera. See also K. Ahmad, ‘Anger over handling of Madagascar's cholera epidemic’, The Lancet, 4 March 2000: 817.

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7 Fieldnotes, March 2013. Interview, P.T. 29 March 2013, Mahajanga, Madagascar. Owing to the sensitive and stigmatized nature of sanitation labor and practices, and per interviewee request, all interviews are anonymous. In some cases, individuals chose their pseudonyms.

8 More detail on the history and explanations for this ancestral taboo will be addressed later in this article. But it is useful to note that similar prohibition practices abounded in southeast Madagascar during the exact cholera epidemic, see H. L. Marqui, 2014 ‘Lutte Ccontre le cholera, ou contre la culture?’, Health, Culture and Society, suppl. Madagascar: Past, Present, and Future, 7:1, 61–65.

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41 ‘zavatra maloto, maloto indrindra, fady…’ Fieldnotes, 10 Dec. 2013.

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58 Feeley-Harnik, ‘The political economy of death’, 12–13.

59 ANRDM/DTP 28, Rapport mensuel sur les travaux executes dans la subdivision de Majunga pendant le mois d'Avril 1898, Adduction eau.

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67 Ibid.

68 These problems were reported through the 1920s and 1930s, see ANRDM/F43, Procés-Verbaux de la séance de la Commission Municipale, Majunga, 15 Nov. 1927 and ANRDM/F44, Procés-Verbaux de la séance de la Commission Municipale, Majunga, 25 Mar. 1931.

69 ANRDM /IJ 2083-4, Arrondissement de Majunga, Rapport Annuels Travaux Publics: Commune de Majunga, 1915, and ANRDM/VIIJ 391–061, letter 14-V from Chef du Service de la Voirie to the Administrateur-Maire de Majunga 29 Jan. 1917.

70 ANRDM/F44, Proces-Verbaux Séance 26 March 1931.

71 ANRDM/VIII 12, ‘Plans d'amenagement et d'extension des villes à Madagascar,’ from Ministre des colonies Leon Perrier to President of the French Republic, 24 Dec. 1926.

72 Interview, B.A., Mahajanga, 25 Jan. 2014.

73 Ibid. ‘Hafahafa’ also has the sense of something ‘different, unseemingly, improper… peculiar’, depending on the context, Richardson, A New Malagasy-English Dictionary, 217.

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78 ANRDM/VIIJ 391, Arret no. 257, approved 10 Sept. 1926.

79 ANRDM/F44, Procès-verbaux, 23 Feb. 1934, “à bon marché qui seront louées par la Commune et constitueront l'embryon du future village indigène de Mahabibo construit avec toutes les conditions d'hygiène désireables à l'extension du réseau de distribution d'eau de la ville, à l'assainissement, par le comblément d'une partie des marais.”

80 ANRDM/F43, Procès-verbaux 26 Feb. 1927.

81 ANRDM/VIIJ 391, letter from Chief of Public Works to Chief of the Subdivision of Public Works in Majunga city 1 Dec 1932. Note that of the 21,172, the European population accounted for 2,936.

82 ANRDM/F44, Procès-verbaux 7 Nov. 1934.

83 ANRDM/F45, Procès-verbaux 11 May 1937.

84 Ibid.

85 Ibid.

86 Bissell, W. C., Urban Design, Chaos, and Colonial Power in Zanzibar (Bloomington, IN, 2011)Google Scholar; Henneberg, K. von, ‘Imperial uncertainties: architectural syncretism and improvisation in Fascist colonial Libya’, Journal of Contemporary History 31 (1996), 373–395CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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88 ANRDM/F43, Procès-verbaux-séance, 26 Feb. 1927.

89 Interviews with J.R., Mahajanga, 28 Oct. 2013; B.R., Mahajanga, 25 Jan. 2014; and P.T., Mahajanga, 9 Dec. 2013.

90 It is not clear whether all prisoners were required to carry out this work or only select prisoners.

91 Interview, Mahajanga, 25 Jan. 2014.

92 Interview with P.T., Mahajanga, 9 Dec. 2013.

93 Interview with P. K. Mahajanga, 9 Dec. 2013. Note folaka razana literally means ‘broken ancestors’, signaling a rupture in ancestral well-being.

94 Deschamps, H., Les Migrations intérieures passées et présentes à Madagascar (Paris, 1959), 147Google Scholar; Thompson, V. and Adloff, R., The Malagasy Republic: Madagascar Today (Stanford, CA, 1965), 270Google Scholar.

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97 Interview with H.D, Mahajanga, 26 Apr. 2013.

98 Interview with J.R. Mahajanga, 22 Oct. 2013.

99 In interviews, ‘visy’ was commonly used for latrine or toilet, from ‘W.C.’ (abbreviation for water closet). Most Malagasy interview partners preferred to use foreign (French, or in this case, British English) variants when discussing sensitive matters such as sex or toileting practices. Using Malagasy terms for these difficult subjects risks ‘breaking the ears’ (manimba sofina) because the matter is ‘too hard’ (mafy loatra) (fieldnotes Aug. 2013).

100 Interview with H.D., Mahajanga, 26 Apr. 2013.

101 For comparative contemporary studies of moral tensions around polluted wealth in Madagascar, see Walsh, A., ‘“Hot money” and daring consumption in a northern Malagasy sapphire-mining town’ American Ethnologist 30 (2): 290–305CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and beyond, see De Boeck, F., ‘Domesticating diamonds and dollars: identity, expenditure and sharing in southwestern Zaire (1984–1997), Development and Change 29:4 (1998): 777–810CrossRefGoogle Scholar; High, M., ‘Polluted money, polluted wealth: emerging regimes of value in the Mongolian gold rush’, American Ethnologist 40:4 (2013): 676–688CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taussig, M., The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (Chapel Hill, NC, 1980)Google Scholar.

102 ANRDM/F 47, Arrêtes et Decisions Municipaux (1937–47), Arrête Municipal 111.16, 3 Apr. 1937, signed 26 Apr. 1937.

103 For more on historical conceptions of ‘creole’ and ‘créolité’ in the western Indian Ocean, see Larson, P., Ocean of Letters: Language and Creolization in an Indian Ocean Diaspora (Cambridge, 2009)Google Scholar; Vaughan, M., Creating the Creole Island: Slavery in Eighteenth Century Mauritius (Durham, NC, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104 Annuaire general de Madagascar et dépendances (1907), 233.

105 Interview with ‘Tsiavono’, Mahajanga, 25 Jan. 2014.

106 The period under Tsiranana was, however, widely understood as a ‘neo-colonial’ moment which maintained the political and economic configurations of colonialism and the dominance of French interests was deeply contested by activists in the early 1970s.

107 ‘Taloha, manadio ny lalana, manadio rehetra a grace de Comorians…’ Interview with P.K., Mahajanga, 29 Oct. 2012. Interview with J.R., Mahajanga, 22 Oct. 2014.

108 ANDRM/IK 2214, Arrondissement de Majunga, Rapport Annuel Travaux Publics, 1925; Deschamps, Les migrations intérieures, 45.

109 Deschamps, Les migrations intérieures; Gueunier, N., Les chemins de l'Islam à Madagascar (Paris, 1994), 45–46Google Scholar.

110 Mohamed, M., ‘Les ‘Sabena’ de la Grande Comore. Étude d'une migration’, in Vérin, P. and Allibert, C. (eds.), Les Comoriens à Majunga: histoire, migrations, émeutes (Paris, 2007), 48Google Scholar; N. Radifison ‘Conflits ethniques et leur résolution à Majunga de 1740 à aujourd'hui’, in P. Vérin and C. Allibert (eds.), Les Comoriens à Majunga, 151.

111 Radifison, ‘Conflits ethniques’, 151.

112 Their work practices were described in detail in a research report conducted in 2010 by the multinational development organization Institut Régional de Coopération Développement (IRCOD), as part of a larger sanitation initiative, which suggested that the sanitation workers were primarily male, in their thirties and forties, and from a wide range of ethnic and religious backgrounds. See A. Larvido and P-H Dodan, 2011 ‘Assainissement des matières fécales de la ville de Mahajanga: caracterisation du secteur informel de la vidange des latrines dans la ville’, IRCOD, 27.

113 Interview with ‘Tsiavono’, Mahajanga, 15 Jan. 2014.

114 Van Der Geest, ‘The night-soil collector’, 203.

115 For discussions of these concepts in another context, see Cole, J., Sex and Salvation: Imagining the Future in Madagascar (Chicago, 2010), 59–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 199.

116 This changed around 2010–15, when several non-governmental organizations enacted new programs to address the issue of sanitation in the city.