ABSTRACT

In this article, we pursue a route for understanding the decentralisation of wastewater treatment that moves away from thinking in terms of individual responsibility and technical determinism and mobilises the analytical lens of care to articulate more-than-human relationality as an organising principle of governing environmental infrastructures. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Dutch Flevopolder, we focus on the mundane practices of handling wastewater. We show how households are entangled in a multispecies infrastructure: they engage with wastewater as users of toilets, guardians of bacteria and reed beds, and technology-assisted monitors of pollution. We argue that these infrastructural relations are variously cared for in practice, but remain neglected as part of formalised wastewater management. Finally, we advocate a form of environmental governance that recognises and engages with the waste work undertaken by all stakeholders, as they configure an infrastructure in which unruly processes unfold, in a caring, rather than controlling, mode.

摘要

在这篇文章中，我们寻求一条理解废水处理分散化的途径，该途径摆脱了个人责任和技术决定论的思考，并动员了关怀的分析镜头来阐明超越人类的关系作为管理环境基础设施的组织原则。借鉴荷兰 Flevopolder 的民族志实地调查，我们专注于处理废水的平凡做法。我们展示了家庭如何与多物种基础设施纠缠在一起：他们作为厕所的使用者、细菌和芦苇床的守护者以及技术辅助的污染监测器与废水打交道。我们认为，这些基础设施关系在实践中得到了不同程度的关注，但作为正式废水管理的一部分仍然被忽视。最后，我们提倡一种环境治理形式，承认并参与所有利益相关者所从事的废物工作，因为他们配置了一个基础设施，在这个基础设施中，不守规矩的过程以一种关怀而不是控制的方式展开。