Indrawan Prabaharyaka

Sanitation Interfaces and Sanitary Citizenship: The Politics of Defecation Assemblages in Contemporary Jakarta
Indrawan Prabaharyaka (Munich Centre for Technology in Society/TU Munich)

Sanitation is crucial to the construction of the ‘good’ city and the ‘good life in the city’. Using the case study of Jakarta, Indonesia, where only 2% of the population is covered by centralized sewage treatment plant, I am going to discuss the sanitation interfaces and toileting designs and practices that mediate the metabolism of human waste as well as enact a certain user and thus constitute a form of sanitary citizenship. Indeed sanitation can be generally understood as a struggle to maintain cleanliness and to detract dirtiness, and the fascinating thing about places like Jakarta—and the other global South cities—is that we encounter a sheer variety of practices, devices, and even meanings to achieving sanitation. Therefore to understand better the enactment of sanitation interfaces and the constitution of sanitary citizenship, I explore further the articulation of practices and scripts of defecation and anal cleansing. It is hoped that the exploration will contribute to the urban ethico-political contestation of the nuanced meanings of good/bad and clean/dirty sanitation practices and urban subjectivities.