Doctoral Dissertation Research: Participatory Cities? The Sexual Politics of Waste in Dakar, Senegal

新自由主义作为一种发展范式的兴起，使一系列促进以社区为基础的发展战略的思想脱颖而出。在各种体制来源的引领下，这些方法主导着非洲的当代发展政策，并越来越多地被用于提供城市公共服务，如供水、住房升级和废物管理。然而，参与性发展的影响和影响是激烈辩论的主题。本博士论文项目通过考察塞内加尔达喀尔社区垃圾项目的性别政治，来质疑参与式发展的赋权主张。它将比较由塞内加尔非政府组织在达喀尔外围三个服务严重不足、社会经济相似的Lebou社区发起的妇女主导的垃圾收集项目的不同社区结果，“从完全放弃到长期扩张”。通过参与观察、调查、档案研究、废物处理制图，以及对项目负责人、家庭成员以及民间和公共机构负责人的深入访谈，该项目将分两个阶段进行。第一阶段将建立围绕废物的性别话语，从而围绕废物的文化意义如何塑造废物工作的社会空间组织，从而塑造废物管理的政治景观。第二阶段建立在第一阶段的基础上，通过对每个社区围绕三个关键变量的斗争进行比较分析：伊斯兰教、性别角色和地方政府的角色，这些都是通过“浪费”这个话语习语表达出来的。通过揭露当地浪费政治经济的轮廓，该项目将揭示这些项目中利益和责任的景观，从而揭示每个社区的不同结果及其赋权含义。本项目探讨了社区垃圾收集项目的赋权主张，以便深入了解参与作为非洲城市发展的主要战略。这项研究肯定了参与性发展项目的政治性质，并将地方政治争论置于家庭内部动态和更大的政治经济力量的结合点上。因此，它有望为发展政策和实践提供见解，并为全球南方爆炸性大都市的城市治理提供一系列广泛的问题。此外，它将有助于关于公民社会和国家的发展辩论，以及考虑地方，性别，特别是新自由主义全球化不平衡表达中的非洲轨迹的地理方法。该奖项由美国国家科学基金会国际科学与工程办公室共同资助。

The rise of neoliberalism as a development paradigm has brought to the fore a constellation of ideas promoting community-based development strategies. Spearheaded by a variety of institutional sources, these approaches dominate contemporary development policy in Africa and are increasingly being employed in the provision of urban public services of water, housing upgrades, and waste management. The impacts and implications of participatory development, however, are the subject of intense debate. This doctoral dissertation project interrogates the empowerment claims of participatory development through examining the sexual politics of community-based waste projects in Dakar, Senegal. It will compare divergent neighborhood outcomes"ranging from complete abandonment to long-term expansion" of women-led trash collection projects initiated by a Senegalese NGO in three severely under-serviced, socio-economically similar Lebou neighborhoods on the periphery of Dakar. Using participant observation, surveys, archival research, mapping of waste practices, and in-depth interviews with project leaders, household members, and leaders of civic and public institutions, the project will be conducted in two phases. The first phase will establish the gendered discourses surrounding waste and thus how cultural meanings surrounding waste shape the socio-spatial organization of waste-work and thus the political landscape of waste management. The second phase builds on the first through a comparative analysis of struggles around three key variables in each neighborhood: Islam, gender roles, and the role of the local state, expressed through the discursive idiom of waste. Through exposing the contours of the local political economy of waste, the project will reveal the landscape of benefit and responsibility in these projects and thus shed light on the very different outcomes in each neighborhood and their empowerment implications. This project probes the empowerment claims of community-based trash collection projects in order to lend insight into participation as a primary strategy for urban development in Africa. This study asserts the political nature of participatory development projects and places local political contestation at the conjuncture of intra-household dynamics and larger political-economic forces. As such, it promises to lend insight into development policy and practice as well as a wide-ranging set of questions regarding urban governance in the exploding metropolises of the global South. Furthermore, it will contribute to development debates on civil society and the state as well as geographical approaches considering place, gender, and particularly, African trajectories within the uneven expressions of neoliberal globalization. This award is co-funded by NSF's Office of International Science and Engineering.