As warned
before, I will continue my, for most people boring, dive through the muddy
sewage of theory even here. Sorry for that, here’s something more fun and representative of my own state of mind in doing this.
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How does
a society actually come to choose a certain way of getting rid of garbage and human
waste? By the workings of research by smarter people, we've been presented with
a conceptual model, a theory. Here, the ‘way of getting rid of garbage and human
waste’ is called a ‘societal sanitation approach’, which is constructed
(=created) in different ways in different cultures. At the level of the single
household, the task of sanitation
and waste management is to ensure a healthy living environment by handling
human and household wastes in the safest possible way with regard to both
humans and the natural environment. What that way actually is depends on the
culture as well as the environment. In this model, the societal sanitation
approach is divided into five stages of the individual sanitation experience
(the most euphemistic way of saying ‘Taking a dump’ I've found so far) that are
further divided into components that decide the actions an individual takes to
attend to the urge.
1.
The Urge. The natural urge to relieve one is
the primary driver behind the need for sanitation systems. The two components
of this first stage are whether one feels a need to urinate or defecate, which
plays a role in the decision-making of the individual (where to go and how to
‘just do it’). Nothing needs explanation there, I bet. How the urge is
experienced and reacted upon is to some extent dependent on gender and age, as
the requirements felt can differ between men, women and children.
2.
Place – the favorite word of
geographers. The second priority
in the sanitation approach is the need to find privacy and enough safety for
answering to the primal urge. This brings into consideration the question of
place, meaning where to actually make your mark. This is decided by “the
contexts of the physical living environment as well as the specific situation”,
meaning where you are and why. The behaviour of an individual feeling the same
urge can and does often vary, for instance between home and public places (such
as school or the workplace), between rural and urban settings and between
activities taking place, e.g. attending a meeting or a party. Anyone can
confirm this from personal experience.
3.
Process. The third step is the actual use of the toilet.
This includes the posture taken by the individual (whether you prefer sitting
or standing – not always a straightforward decision, you know) and the
convenience required (and sometimes even met). All this depends on the
particular culture, habits and gender of the individual.
4.
Hygiene. The fourth stage involves attending
the hygienic needs, in particular cleaning yourself and the immediate making of
enough distance between you and your waste by for instance flushing. These
needs are taken care of in different ways depending on e.g. the availability of
water, the particular technical solution being used and cultural aspects. For
example some like to wipe themselves while others prefer washing with water.
5.
Waste disposal. The last stage of the societal
sanitation approach is that of final waste disposal, which also decides what
effect you have on the natural environment. This obviously depends on the
technology available. It should be pointed out that this disposal of waste
might be seen as final only from the perspective of the users of a sanitation
system (meaning that flushing is not
final disposal, really).
Of course,
the attitude of a culture towards the primal urge, human excreta and the
handling of it is only a part of the explanation of the sanitation solutions a
population ends up using. Therefore, we need a more comprehensive and detailed
(in short, a better) conceptual model of the system that strives to explain and
understand a societal sanitation approach more comprehensively. So we need
another model to understand the first one? I see the beginning of a vicious
circle here... This concept involves four main factors that play varying roles
in shaping the sanitation approach: The human settlement, the natural
environment, the culture and the society.
“The human settlement is in the framework
seen as the built environment that facilitates the preferred lifestyle of a
community or society, also with regard to sanitation.” It explains where we
live and how, and I’m sorry to confess that the quote came from my pen... The
characteristics of the human settlement that most clearly affect the sanitation
approach are the density and the natural setting of the community. In more
densely populated areas, such as towns, toilets are more often preferred to be
inside the house to avoid moving out of the home for excreting as we all
understand. Meanwhile in rural areas, at least in developing countries toilets
are more often built outside to prevent odors in the actual home (That one is
not unheard of in rural Finland either), and even open defecation (doing it in
the bush) is more often practiced in sparsely populated areas where privacy is
easier to ensure. Sharing toilets with other households is also generally more easily
accepted in urban areas due to lack of space, while in rural areas the privacy
and exclusiveness for the household of the toilet is emphasized. On the
communal level densely built areas tend to create and neglect more extensive
infrastructure, such as a sewage system, serving or supposed to be serving a
larger amount of households, while waste disposal is in rural areas seen more
as the responsibility of each household.
The
surrounding natural environment decides
to a large extent the characteristics of the human settlement and therefore
also its waste management. The most important features of the natural
environment are in this case water accessibility (is flushing even possible?),
vegetation type, climate (dry climates make handling a lot easier) and terrain
(Do you have to worry about your garbage flowing to the neighbour’s next time
it rains? Or someone else’s running to your backyard?). For example, in densely
populated and humid areas where water access is reliable throughout the year,
different forms of flush toilets have been in use for the longest time. In dry
areas waste is more often buried or left in the open as the dry environment is
in itself an effective tool of treating waste. Most importantly the natural
environment plays an important role in deciding whether a community is faecophilicor faecophobic.
As with all
other aspects of human life and behavior, culture,
to a varying degree formed by religion,
controls the sanitation approach of a society. Islam considers human waste to
be in general dangerous and bad and relies on different concepts of ‘unclean’
in restricting the handling and even discussion of human excreta. As for the
bible, it makes next to no mention
on either excreta disposal or its reuse. Buddhism even clearly promotes the
reuse of all waste, a stance that is connected to the general notion of
reincarnation. Some cultures consider excreta to be always filthy regardless of
religion and stress the need to avoid contact with it. It is normal in such
cultures that sanitation facilities are placed outside the home. It is reported
that even witchcraft and other superstitious beliefs comes into it in some
societies especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, possibly stemming from traditional
religions that dominated in pre-colonial times. This is when maybe the
strongest of cultural values, fear, is connected to human waste. Even here in
the Taita Hills, outsiders handling someone’s poo can be seen as
suspect to say the least. The governor himself lately had to address this,
advising people to “to stop prioritizing witchcraftand find ways of enhancing development in the region”!
Cultures
also vary in exactly how offensive
excreta are considered. When it comes to cultural meanings attached to human
excreta, it is also important to note that a distinction is usually made
between pee and poo and that the same values might not apply to both. These
cultural values can have implication for e.g. how people working with handling
human waste are treated and whether or not it is considered as suitable to only
certain social segments. Who would like to be seen as a witch only for working
in waste management, hey?
Messy,
isn’t it?
I apologize
to anyone who read the whole post, got a bit carried away there...
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