Suchergebnisse

Access to clean water and water transportation systems have been long-standing signifiers of 'modernity.' Current statistics of availability to improved water sources suggest that Guineans are living outside of accepted norms for modern life. This paper explores daily life through the lens of water workers, water collection, water sources and water containers in order to understand the day-to-day reality behind these statistics and to explore the meaning of modern life in urban West Africa. My point of entrance parallels this measurement of 'modernity' and asks how does water arrive in the homes of West African urban families? For a mid-sized West African city there are various pathways that deliver water to households that all involve water workers and technologies: this paper documents and explores them in order to think critically about avenues of development that aim to improve the flow and access to clean water. The research is based upon participant observation, in-depth interviews and surveys of concessions in a mid-sized West African city.

The COVID-19 pandemic affects everyone, a statement that is true by definition, yet woefully unhelpful in our understanding of it and its effects today and in the future. Thus we find ourselves in a moment unprepared for the fast-approaching, unanticipated future. Under stable conditions, we might operate with a "good working model of an anticipated 'future'" to speculate on our preparedness for the possible (Adams, Murphy, and Clarke 2009, 247). Or we may speculate in order to reimagine social relations within new ethical frameworks (Jones 2015). We anticipate what we imagine and envision as possible (Adams, Murphy, and Clarke 2009). We are writing and thinking about this not under stable conditions, but in the early moments of the COVID-19 pandemic when anticipation of and speculation about what is to come is being challenged and contradicted daily in the news cycle by government officials, experts, and everyday citizens. Our thinking, as well as this contribution to the scholarship on the COVID-19 crisis, is defined by an ineluctable tension about what is and what might be. In this musing, we attempt to flesh out just one aspect of the COVID-19 crisis: the anticipatory and speculative nature of COVID-19 thinking. We direct our attention during this time of crisis to how different forms of ethical thinking are joining up, interweaving, and braiding. By framing ethics in the context of anticipation, our aim is to capture threads of anticipation and speculation that may be used to tether attempts to create the future with, after, or beyond the novel coronavirus and/or the next crisis.