BishtRef
Articles Journals Publishers Authors Subjects Most Cited New Papers Year Stats Open Access
journal article Open Access May 01, 2021

Global Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Approaches: Anthropological Contributions and Future Directions for Engineering

Cassandra L. Workman Maryann R. Cairns Francis L. de los Reyes Matthew E. Verbyla
Environmental Engineering Science Vol. 38 No. 5 pp. 402-417 · SAGE Publications
View at Publisher Save 10.1089/ees.2020.0321
Abstract
Anthropologists contribute key insights toward a comprehensive understanding of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) as a multidimensional, multiscalar, and culturally embedded phenomenon. Yet, these insights have yet to be sufficiently operationalized and implemented in WASH development and wider WASH access-related paradigms. Ensuring WASH security requires a comprehensive approach to identifying both human health risk and environmental impact of WASH-related programs and strategies. It requires an understanding of how sanitation is integrated into households and communities and how individuals within particular cultural contexts practice sanitation and hygiene. This work facilitates that goal by outlining the major contributions of anthropology and allied social sciences to WASH, as well as outlining key considerations for future work and collaboration. We identify six major themes that, if applied in future engineering approaches, will more equitably integrate stakeholders and multiple vantage points in the successful implementation of WASH projects for marginalized and diverse groups. These include a critical understanding of previous approaches, culturally aware interventions, capacity building that considers (un)intended impact, co-created technology, collaboration between fields such as anthropology and engineering, and challenge-ready initiatives that respond to historic and emergent social and environmental inequity.
Topics

No keywords indexed for this article. Browse by subject →

References
190
[1]
Abu-Lughod L. (1996). Writing against culture. In R.G. Fox, Ed., Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, p. 137.
[2]
Agar M.H. (1996). The Professional Stranger: An Informal Introduction to Ethnography (Vol. 2). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
[6]
Andrés B.J., , and Evans S. (2014). Power and Control in the Imperial Valley: Nature, Agribusiness, and Workers on the California Borderland, 1900–1940. Texas A&M UP, College Station, Texas.
[11]
Bakker K. (2017). The “commons” versus the “commodity”: Alter-globalization, anti-privatization and the human right to water in the global south introduction: The triumph of market environmentalism?. Antipode, 98, 206.
[21]
Burke R.J., , and Mattis M.C. (2017). Women and Minorities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics: Upping the Numbers. Cheltenham, UK, Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing.
[34]
Coffey D., , and Spears D. (2017). Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development and the Costs of Caste. India: Harper Collins.
[35]
Comaroff J. (1993). The diseased heart of Africa: medicine, colonialism and the black body. In Knowledge, Power, and Practice: The Anthropology of Medicine and Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, p. 305.
[36]
Cooke B. and Kothari U. (Eds.). (2001). Participation: The new tyranny? London: Zed books.
[39]
Crewe E., , and Harrison E. (1998). Whose Development? An Ethnography of Aid. London & New York: Zed Books.
[45]
Douglas E.P. (2015). Engineering as a space of white privilege. Underst. Dismantling Privil. 5, 36.
[48]
Edwards P.N. (2002). Infrastructure and modernity: Force, time, and social organization in the history of sociotechnical systems. In P. Brey, A. Rip, and A. Feenberg, Eds. Technology and Modernity: The Empirical Turn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. p. 185.

Showing 50 of 190 references

Cited By
30
Anaerobic Digestion as a Core Technology in Addressing the Global Sanitation Crisis: Challenges and Opportunities

Xavier Fonoll Almansa, Renata Starostka · 2023

Environmental Science & Technol...
Metrics
30
Citations
190
References
Details
Published
May 01, 2021
Vol/Issue
38(5)
Pages
402-417
License
View
Authors
C
Cassandra L. Workman

Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA.

M
Maryann R. Cairns

Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, USA.

F
Francis L. de los Reyes

Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA.

M
Matthew E. Verbyla

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, San Diego State University, San Diego, California, USA.

Cite This Article
Cassandra L. Workman, Maryann R. Cairns, Francis L. de los Reyes, et al. (2021). Global Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Approaches: Anthropological Contributions and Future Directions for Engineering. Environmental Engineering Science, 38(5), 402-417. https://doi.org/10.1089/ees.2020.0321
Related

You May Also Like

Stability of Nanobubbles

Jay N. Meegoda, Shaini Aluthgun Hewage · 2018

246 citations

Prediction of Soil Enzymes Activity by Digital Terrain Analysis: Comparing Artificial Neural Network and Multiple Linear Regression Models

Samaneh Tajik, Shamsollah Ayoubi · 2012

67 citations

Biodegradation of Emerging Organic Micropollutants in Nonconventional Biological Wastewater Treatment: A Critical Review

Flor Y. Garcia-Becerra, Irmene Ortíz · 2018

51 citations

Effects of Organic and Inorganic Passivators on the Immobilization of Cadmium in Contaminated Soils: A Review

Saqib Bashir, Muhammad Adeel · 2019

48 citations

Aqueous Phase Biodegradation Kinetics of 10 PAH Compounds

Christopher D. Knightes, Catherine A. Peters · 2003

41 citations