Water, pipes and the cholera pathogen: The colonial politics of germs and water infrastructures in the Philippines

Abstract

This paper examines how the politics of water governance intersected with germ suppression during US colonial rule in the Philippines. Drawing on historical materials and policy documents, we critically trace two interrelated processes of hydroterritorialization through which cholera outbreaks in the early 1900s spurred the production of sanitary waters in the Philippines through dams, water supply networks, and irrigation systems. First, we show how differentiated access to water along the lines of race, class and region reproduced an uneven geography of disease through historical processes of exclusion from clean water. Second, we develop the concept of corporeal territorialization to explain how the cholera outbreak provided the political and economic rationale for expansive water infrastructure projects. We argue that racialized colonial rationalities around water and sanitation not only disciplined bodies but also reconfigured socioeconomic and political geographies through diverse infrastructural interventions. Our analysis contributes to geographical debates on the intersection of infrastructure politics, embodiment, and the spatial governance of water systems.