The Story of Domestic Water Meters and Bills in Khartoum: Material Ruins and Imperial Ruination of Public Services in Urban Sudan
This article explores the story of obsolete water meters and water payments in two old legal residential neighborhoods of Khartoum (Sudan) served by the Khartoum State Water Corporation (KSWC). Based on fieldwork conducted between 2008 and 2012, I question the unchanged model of flat-rate payments d...
Enregistré dans:
| Dans: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/esma, |
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| Auteur principal: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Langue: | Anglais |
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Égypte Soudan mondes arabes
2025
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| Accès en ligne: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Résumé: | This article explores the story of obsolete water meters and water payments in two old legal residential neighborhoods of Khartoum (Sudan) served by the Khartoum State Water Corporation (KSWC). Based on fieldwork conducted between 2008 and 2012, I question the unchanged model of flat-rate payments despite the important political changes and administrative transformations the country has experienced during a century since the 1920’s when the colonial administration implemented the first urban water scheme. This reflection allows me to think the material legacies of empires and their transformations by postcolonial governments and to take into account the relations between the welfare and the neoliberal models of urban services in Sudan. It results that these models are not excluding one another but rather appear as more or less prominent at different moments of this century. Along this journey, the outdated water meters, unpaid bills, and obsolete paperwork, lists, and receipts are considered as the ruins of these uncompleted processes of (neo)liberalization or “welfarization”, their lack of achievement being itself a process of imperial ruination. |
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