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Fluid authority: Exploring hydraulic social contracts in Nairobi’s water provision

Maja Dahl Jeppesen
Department of Anthropology, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; majakdjeppesen@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: This paper aims to expand our understanding of the diverse relationships in water provision in cities such as Nairobi, where urban water is provided through heterogeneous actors and through piped and non-piped systems. The paper contributes to the study of authority and urban infrastructure by examining how interactions between urban water systems, their providers, and the people who depend on them shape forms of authority emerging around urban water. The paper draws on insights from an ethnographic study conducted in an informal settlement named Kibera and in Langata, another residential area of Nairobi, Kenya. It examines the forms of authority that are created around water service providers and whether the concept of “hydraulic social contracts” adds to our understanding of relations of authority in service provision. The fluid materiality of water, fragile material infrastructures, and their social embeddedness tie into fluid relations of authority where water service providers embody seemingly contradictory roles defined by exploitation and solidarity. The paper concludes that hydraulic social contracts are particularly precarious and that relations of authority based on water are difficult to fix into static conceptualisations.

KEYWORDS: Authority, water provision, social contracts, infrastructures, Nairobi, Kenya