Sticking around or fading away: water patronage and value in Chad

Abstract

This article explores trajectories in the politics of water patronage in N’Djamena, Chad. Water appears as a malleable and elusive commodity, at once ubiquitous and somewhat overlooked. Drawing on ethnographic field research in peripheral N’Djamena, I argue that relational distance is skilfully handled by water patrons for monetary rewards and influence. Such handling swings the making of water value in contradictory directions unaccounted for in much of the existing literature on water patronage. Present or absent, hidden or on display, funders or profit makers, patrons may leverage water supply through material, symbolic or entrepreneurial labour that places them in conflicting spaces. Ultimately, these leveraging processes based on the manipulation of relational distance create a multifaceted water valuation. The various positionalities of the water patrons and their use of relational distance point to the existence of multiple water values, rather than a single one. Therefore, I argue that water may have either a ‘distant value’ or an ‘anchored value’, depending on the relational distance strategy implemented by the patron who provides it.