The (in)visibility of sewage management and problematization as strategy for public awareness

Abstract

Sewage management is crucial to the functioning of cities, yet, in the global North, seldom acknowledged in public. Wastewater infrastructures are mainly hidden underground and human excrement is considered a private matter. However, to make sanitation stay invisible, its dysfunctionality (e.g., leaking pipes, aging wastewater plants) is sometimes in acute need of being highlighted. Moreover, the work essential to keep the infrastructures maintained needs to be recognized and compensated for. Based on interviews with actors in the sewage management sector in Sweden, news articles, and public information campaigns, the present article explores how political action and public engagement are mobilized through moves between visibility and invisibility. The analysis focuses on four different modes of problematization: inproblematization, problematization, deproblematization, and unproblematization. Inscribed in the research fields of urban infrastructures and public engagement, the article sheds light on how the public secret of managing feces is upheld, through balancing acts such as creating discursive space, negotiating infrastructural disruptions, making problems treatable, and individualizing solutions. These different modes of problematization are crucial to achieving the right public attention and political measures.