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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how residents of two informal settlements in Accra, Ghana have adopted tactics of everyday resistance to contest poor environmental sanitation in their locality and the obstacles to effective community action posed by politics.

Paper long abstract:

Poor environmental sanitation in informal urban settlements is a manifestation of profound social injustice that is experienced acutely by low-income urban residents. It threatens their physical, mental, and social well-being in a multitude of ways, reinforcing existing structures of injustice. This paper explores how urban residents contest inadequate environmental sanitation in their everyday lives. To do this, it draws on interview data from residents and representatives of traditional and formal authorities in two informal settlements in Accra, Ghana. It examines how communities resort to everyday resistance in the face of inaction on environmental sanitation by the authorities. The focus of this paper is on quiet, legal forms of resistance adopted by residents, rather than the more dramatic, organised, confrontational and visible approaches often associated with resistance. It demonstrates how residents pragmatically adopt different tactics of everyday resistance, both collective and non-collective, as they contest the poor environmental sanitation in their locality. Specific tactics of resistance spanning from persistent complaining to community-organised clean-up exercises are illustrated to demonstrate how residents iteratively engage with, and attempt to distance from, formal political and power structures. This paper illustrates how structures of power and politics that contribute to inadequate environmental sanitation also pose obstacles to community-led efforts to tackle the challenge. It concludes by considering what these urban residents’ experiences might mean for realising social justice through environmental sanitation for all.