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Reaching millions: Water, substitute infrastructure, and the politics of scale in Kenya

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  • Fiona Gedeon Achi

Abstract

This article analyzes the politics of scale in global development by focusing on a sanitation program in western Kenya. It follows the daily work of a nongovernmental organization that seeks to provide access to chlorine dispensers to millions of people for the purpose of disinfecting water. By engaging with literatures on development and infrastructure, this article proposes reach as an analytic that jointly attends to the aspirations, labors, and uncertain outcomes embedded in scale work. An ethnography of reach emphasizes the temporality of off‐grid infrastructures to capture the ambivalent relationships between aspirations and results and between standardization and adaptation, as well as the unstable nature of care. This proves useful to theorizing expansion as potentially generative of, rather than only inimical to, the good life—thereby troubling the vision of scale making as replication often used to understand development projects and their consequences.

Suggested Citation

  • Fiona Gedeon Achi, 2025. "Reaching millions: Water, substitute infrastructure, and the politics of scale in Kenya," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(1), January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecanth:v:12:y:2025:i:1:n:e12329
    DOI: 10.1002/sea2.12329
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Kristin D. Phillips, 2022. "The future sits in places: Electricity, value, and infrastructural triage in Tanzania," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(2), pages 223-239, June.
    2. Ngala Chome, 2020. "Land, livelihoods and belonging: negotiating change and anticipating LAPSSET in Kenya’s Lamu county," Journal of Eastern African Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(2), pages 310-331, April.
    3. Prince K. Guma, 2022. "The Temporal Incompleteness of Infrastructure and the Urban," Journal of Urban Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(1), pages 59-67, January.
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