An Essay on the Bucket: Infrastructures of Excretion and Their Normativity 18+

Abstract

This article examines the social life of infrastructures of excretion conventionally referred to as the bucket toilet, which we contrast with the “normative” mode of relieving oneself associated with urban modernity and described as the white toilet integrated into a sewer network. The bucket toilet is widespread in rural areas, including the Arctic zone of Russia, and shapes specific bodily techniques experienced as acceptable and convenient. Drawing on a range of historical and contemporary contexts, the article analyzes how Western urban norms of distancing from excreta, their centralized management, and the corresponding bodily practices were formed. We also examine the Soviet experience of modernizing the sphere of excretion in a village in the far northeast of the country, where two normative systems—urban and rural—came into conflict. This opposition continues to structure contemporary evaluations of northern settlements by urban administrators, bloggers, and tourists. The use of autonomous infrastructures, such as the bucket toilet, may serve as a basis for negative assessments of rural communities as uneducated, economically disadvantaged, or impassive. Despite the symbolic dominance of urban “toilet” practices, there is a broad spatial and temporal variation in regimes of intimacy associated with excretion. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in settlements in Chukotka and Taymyr, we explore intimate experiences of using different sanitation infrastructures, the (re)disciplining of the body, and trajectories of intrahousehold intimacy associated with the use of the bucket. We also address the spatial configuration of settlements in relation to excretion infrastructures and the semiotic position of the bucket within the private home.

Article in Russian