Online doctoral seminar 2: "Coexisting waterscapes in N’Djamena: moral economy of porting versus infrastructural network expansion?" with Ismael Maazaz
2ND ONLINE DOCTORAL SEMINAR: "COEXISTING WATERSCAPES IN N'DJAMENA"
On Thursday 21st of May, at 1pm, IFRA-Nigeria hosted its second online doctoral seminar through Facebook live. The seminar on “Coexisting waterscapes in N’Djamena: moral economy of porting versus infrastructural network expansion?" was facilitated by Ismael Maazaz, a PhD candidate in African Studies, at the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh.
The doctoral seminar is an opportunity for the PhD candidates to present their first findings and methodologies and get feedbacks from their peers. It is open to all but especially young researchers in social sciences (master and PhD level) with an interest on urban infrastructures and public policies.
WHAT IS IT ABOUT?
This presentation offers critical insights on coexisting water supply schemes in N’Djamena, Chad. Akin to other African cities, N’Djamena is experiencing rapid growth, which leads to expanding peripheral neighbourhoods eastwards beyond the original limits of the Chadian capital. While infrastructural networks of the National Water Company (Société Tchadienne des Eaux, STE) gradually enlarges and growing numbers of households branch, the majority of Eastern N’Djamena relies on alternative water supply solutions, foremost among them boreholes, fountains and/or water porting. This “splintered urbanism” (Graham and Marvin 2001) seemingly fuels increasing discrepancies between N’Djamena’s neighbourhoods, although water end-users often diversify accesses and develop multiple, sometimes contradictory, usages of available networks.
In this online seminar, Ismael Maazaz draws on a 12-month PhD fieldwork in N’Djamena that included interviews and observations of water porters, urban planners, development organisation staff and water end-users as well as an internship with the STE. He kicks off with sketching out N’Djamena’s waterscape and move forward with depicting network transformations as part of development projects, examining the rise of an “hydraulic citizenship” (Anand 2017) in N’Djamena. Finally, he sets out perspectives on water schemes competition/coexistence relevant in other urban contexts in the Global South.
After a short presentation of his thesis topic, approach, methods and first findings, there will be room for participants interested in that topic, to discuss the findings and analysis, as well as to give him some constructive feedbacks for his research.
Re-watch the workshop:
A recorded video of the workshop is still available on the links bellow
Click here to watch the videoDownload the power point here:
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