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Title
Gender and the Politics of Trash in Dakar: Participation, Labor and the "Undisciplined" Woman |
Full text
http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/5zv4993h |
Date
2008 |
Author(s)
Fredericks, Rosalind |
Abstract
This paper explores how the politics of garbage in Senegal's capital city are constituted in and through gendered spaces and divisions of labor. In Senegal, like in many Muslim and Third World countries, household trash is seen as the responsibility of women. As such, the household represents the starting place in the trajectory of conflict and debate surrounding garbage in Senegal as well as the crucible of blame and responsibility used by the Senegalese state in explaining the current crisis in the city's trash management. Furthermore, the neoliberal era in Senegal has seen an explosion of a) participatory development projects which place the work of neighborhood trash collection into the hands of neighborhood women; and b) the widespread entrance of women into the official (paid) trash collection sector as street sweepers and their mobilization in the trash workers union-two developments which have important implications for gendered spatialities and political imaginations. This paper considers the politics of trash in Senegal's neoliberal era through examining the dynamic gendered geographies of garbage at the household, neighborhood, to city scale. It shows the present conjuncture -a time of "crisis" in the official trash system-to be a productive moment in which gendered spaces and roles are being renegotiated in and through discourses of cleanliness, responsibility, and work. These negotiations turn, in particular, on key reference points including Islam and autochthony, and reveal insight into the gendered politics of home and street in contemporary Dakar. |
Subject(s)
Senegal; gender roles |
Language
english |
Publisher
eScholarship, University of California |
Type of publication
article |
Format
application/pdf |
Source
Fredericks, Rosalind. (2008). Gender and the Politics of Trash in Dakar: Participation, Labor and the "Undisciplined" Woman. UCLA: UCLA Center for the Study of Women. Retrieved from: http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/5zv4993h |
Rights
public |
Identifier
qt5zv4993h |
Repository
Berkeley - University of California
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Added to C-A: 2014-02-12;10:04:25 |
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