Call for Papers
AAG 2016: Sanitation inadequacy: Beyond poverty and preferences
Organizer: Richa Dhanju, Texas A&M University
Sanitation inadequacy, defined as lack of access to hygienic and safe human waste disposal infrastructure, affects more than 2.6 million people worldwide. Despite the size and global nature of the problem, and the advantages of geographic approaches for its study (Jewitt, 2011), few geographers do research on this topic. The extent and impact of sanitation inadequacy is rooted in social, economic, political and ecological realities that are particularly complex in the global south. It is crosscut by gender norms, cultural beliefs, and income poverty. It is also about soil type, water availability and poor governance.
Current sanitation policy asserts that sanitation inadequacy stems from household income poverty coupled with individual preferences and beliefs. It is assumed that the poor will be the least likely to afford or access adequate sanitation, and that inadequate sanitation produces negative health and ensuing economic conditions that keep the poor in poverty. However, sanitation scholarship has not attended to the structural and relational issues that produce sanitation inadequacy. The session aims to question the conventional viewpoint that sanitation inadequacy affects only the poor and is a product of their income poverty or preferences.
This session invites papers to examine sanitation inadequacy through the interconnected nature of power and privilege between citizens (caste, class, gender, religious identity, assets), and, between citizens and governments (citizen participation, social capital, development investments). We invite scholars to share their sanitation research from urban or rural parts of the world that challenges individualized framings of sanitation inadequacy to instead highlight its relational and structural causes.
Papers can address the following broad areas:
- poverty and sanitation policies
- the role of political will of governments and NGOs in addressing sanitation inadequacy
- stress and violence experienced by women and girls due to sanitation inadequacy
- impact of livelihoods, land use, and environmental changes on beliefs and practices around sanitation
- key geographic concepts and theories used to understand the current sanitation situation
- analysis of political changes wrought by sanitation interventions or their absence
- rethinking sanitation inadequacy through the application or critique of the relational poverty framework.
Abstract submission:
Please send your paper title and abstract to Richa at rdhanju@tamu.edu by October 20, 2015. Please also email if you would like to be a discussant for this session.
Once you submit abstract for this particular session, you will also need to register and submit an abstract on the AAG website. The AAG abstract deadline is 29 October 2015: http://www.aag.org/cs/http://www.aag.org/cs/annualmeeting/how_to_submit_an_abstract
Reference:
Jewitt, S. (2011). Poo Gurus? Researching the threats and opportunities presented by human waste. Applied Geography, 31 (2), 761–769.