What Happens When We Flush?

Anthropology Now ISSN: 1942-8200 (Print) 1949-2901 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uann20 What Happens When We Flush? Nicholas C. Kawa To cite this article: Nicholas C. Kawa (2016) What Happens When We Flush?, Anthropology Now, 8:2, 34-43 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19428200.2016.1202580 Published online: 29 Sep 2016. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 17 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=uann20 Download by: [Tufts University] Date: 04 January 2017, At: 14:38 features reach far into our houses with their tentacles, they are carefully hidden from view, and we are happily ignorant of the invisible Venice What Happens When of shit underlying our bathrooms, bedrooms, dance halls, and parliaments.”1 We Flush? So what really happens when the modern toilet goes “flush”? The human excreta it Nicholas C. Kawa handles most certainly does not disappear. Instead, a potential resource is turned into waste. But it hasn’t always been this way, and ost people who use a flush toilet prob- it doesn’t have to be. Mably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about where their bodily fluids and solids will journey after they deposit them. This is be- Dark Earths and Night Soils cause modern sanitation systems are designed to limit personal responsibilities when it Much of my research as an environmental comes to managing these most intimate forms anthropologist has focused on human rela- of excreta. With the ability to carry human tionships to soils, particularly anthropogenic excrement out of sight, modern infrastructure soils of Brazilian Amazonia. As early as 2,500 and technology perpetuate the illusion that years ago and perhaps even much earlier, human excrement can be made to “disap- large indigenous settlements formed along pear.” Milan Kundera wonderfully captures the Amazon River and its major tributaries. this point: “Even though the sewer pipelines Through everyday food production and sub- sistence practices, the inhabitants of these settlements deposited mas- sive amounts of organic materials that became incorporated back into the soil. Manioc peels, cacao pods, palm fronds, half-burnt logs and sticks, animal dung and fish bones and yes, human excrement too, all piled up over years and years of vil- lage living. With time, this had a <{{Image 1 goes here}}> distinctive effect on the landscape, slowly transforming the very ground upon which people walked. Such former indigenous settlements can still be identified by their Figure 1. A handful of Amazonian Dark Earth gathered in Borba, Amazonas, Brazil. The soil is the product of long-term indigenous dark, fertile soils known in Brazilian settlement, including organic matter from human excrement. Portuguese as terra preta do índio, 34 anthropology Volume 8 • Number 2 • September 2016 Anthropology Now, 8:34–43, 2016 • Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1942-8200 print / 1949-2901 online • DOI: 10.1080/19428200.2016.1202580 Figure 2. Archaeologists Claide de Paula Moraes and his assistant take a break from excavating a test pit at an Amazonian Dark Earth site. or what is often described in English as Am- societies, terra preta is prime evidence that azonian Dark Earth. In contradiction to the past human populations altered regional prevailing notion that Amazonian upland soils in ways that actually expanded their ag- soils inhibited the development of complex ricultural potential. Nicholas C. Kawa What Happens When We Flush? 35 In pre-Columbian Amazonia, human ex- roads leading to the fields … were the loads crement may not have been perceived as of night soil carried on the shoulders of men waste at all. Soil chemical analyses suggest and on the backs of animals … Strange as it that it was used — either deliberately or not may seem, there are not today and apparently — in that wild mix of composted materials never have been, even in the largest and old- that led to the formation of terra preta. Even est cities of Japan, China or Korea, anything today, the soils continue to attract contempo- corresponding to the hydraulic systems of rary farmers for the production of a number sewage disposal used now by western na- <{{Image 2 goes here}}> of valuable cash crops, many of which are tions … when I asked my interpreter if it was grown in terra preta because of its distinctive not the custom of the city during the winter fertility. months to discharge its night soil in the sea Since the early origins of agriculture, … his reply came quick and sharp, ‘No, that farmers throughout the world have used hu- would be waste. We throw nothing away. It is man excrement as a fertilizer, often known worth too much money.’”3 In the year prior to euphemistically as “night soil.” This is partic- King’s trip to Japan in 1909, statistics from the ularly well documented in China, which saw Japanese Bureau of Agriculture showed that the development of an elaborate network of almost 24 million tons of excreta had been night soil trade between urban and rural areas used on nearly 13.5 million hectares of ar- during the 16th and early 17th centuries. The able land. King believed that Western nations historian Yong Xue has shown that Jiangnan, could learn a great deal from East Asian soci- the most prosperous region in early modern eties, especially with regard to the manage- China, owed its remarkable rice harvests to ment of human and animal wastes, which he intensive fertilization, which consisted in believed were “sacred to agriculture.” Holy large part of urban night soil collected by ru- shit, indeed. ral farmers.2 As the night soil trade expanded, many farmers eventually gave up their work in agriculture to become professional night The Origins of the soil collectors. The market was so lucrative “Culture of Flushing” that some less-than-honest individuals made a living by extorting night soil boat operators Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most Euro- — yes, there were even poop pirates! pean cities relied on night soil collectors to In 1649, authorities in Edo (what is now remove excrement from cesspits and privies Tokyo) banned toilets that discharged into before trafficking it into the countryside for canals or rivers to prevent human excre- use as agricultural fertilizer, just as seen in ment from being foolishly wasted. Later, in China and Japan. However, by the mid-19th the early 20th century, the American agricul- century, the flush toilet had become widely tural scientist Franklin Hiram King observed sold and marketed in Europe as increased during his visit to Japan, “Among the most urbanization and industrial wealth made it common sights on our rides from Yokohama an attractive amenity for the social elite and to Tokyo, both within the city and along the those who aspired to be among its members. 36 anthropology Volume 8 • Number 2 • September 2016 Rather than having to rub elbows with the considered to be at serious risk from sewer- neighbors while relieving oneself at a local age.”5 The model of the private flush toilet cesspit or privy, the private flush toilet made encouraged this culture of flushing, comfort- it possible to comfortably and discreetly ably carrying urban excreta out of sight and evacuate one’s bowels within the confines out of mind into the rivers and out into the of the home. According to one survey, wa- open ocean. And so the modern hydraulic ter closet installation increased tenfold in sewage system was born. the city of London between 1824 and 1844.4 Initially, private toilets were simply flushed into local cesspits, but the ballooning urban A Dying River population quickly led to catastrophic con- sequences for sanitation and public health. Although the spread of disease from feces With the growth in popularity of the flush leaking into drinking water is what spurred toilet, human manure became considerably the development of the modern sanitation diluted, which affected its value for agricul- system, the problem of keeping human ex- tural application. At the same time, the excrement out of water was never really ad- pansion of cities forced night soil collectors dressed. Instead, the system attempted to to cover greater distances to reach their mar- resolve this by just flushing it away, further kets in rural areas. In Victorian-era London, downstream, where it could become some- the cost of emptying a cesspit was double one else’s concern. Only very recently have the daily wage of an average skilled laborer, modern cities adopted wastewater treatment which presented an added challenge to facilities to sort this problem out. In many ur- timely disposal. These diverse factors created ban settings throughout the world, including a recipe for bacteriological disaster as leak- the outskirts of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, the ing cesspools began to contaminate drinking problem has yet to be addressed at all. wells. Between 1831 and 1866, Britain was In July of 2013, I traveled to Salvador to ravaged by four distinct cholera epidemics, accompany a friend in her research on local losing more than 50,000 people in the year fishermen’s fight for access to waterways and 1849 alone. resources in the face of increasing urbaniza- At the time, there was much debate in Eu- tion and development. One afternoon, we <{{Image 3 goes here}}> rope over the flushing of human feces into traveled up the Joanes River with an elder the new sewer systems that had been de- fisherman and his nephew, Paulo, to see the signed originally to handle city storm water problems they were facing.

Load more