The Governmentality of Rural Household Waste Management Practices in Ala Ajagbusi, Nigeria

Saheed Adebayo Abdulwakeel and Orjan Bartholdson
Additional contact information
Saheed Adebayo Abdulwakeel: Department of Urban and Rural Development, Division of Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Ultuna, 750 07 Uppsala, Sweden
Orjan Bartholdson: Department of Urban and Rural Development, Division of Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Ultuna, 750 07 Uppsala, Sweden

Social Sciences, 2018, vol. 7, issue 6, 1-20

Abstract: There is a gap in the literature linking waste management practices to social theory. This paper attempts to bridge this gap through a study of waste management practices in Ala Ajagbusi village, Nigeria. The study explores how members of households in Ala Ajagbusi handle waste. The relevant themes of the empirical findings are categorized and linked to a social theory, Michel Foucault’s governmentality. The aim was to investigate how members of the households handle and make sense of their waste management practices. This research adopts a qualitative approach and is inspired by phenomenology. These are the bedrocks upon which the data collection methods are chosen and the interview questions are informed accordingly. The results show that villagers collectively, every week in a rotational manner, sweep their households, dispose of, and burn waste in public spaces. Villagers walk some miles from their households before they can empty their waste receptacles. Sometimes waste management behaviours are adjusted to seasonal variations. The findings also show that the villagers have no engagement with the state and local government concerning waste management. The results are linked to social theory to understand the waste management behaviours of villagers in Ala Ajagbusi.

Keywords: waste; governmentality; household; moral codes; political technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/7/6/95/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/7/6/95/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:7:y:2018:i:6:p:95-:d:151522

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().