Statecraft: The Material-Politics of Public Health and Sanitary Infrastructures in 19th Century Istanbul

In 19th century Istanbul, public health and sanitary infrastructures performed a significant role in the formation of governmental state. They strived to build an urban milieu for the healthy circulation of humans, vehicles, animals, air, water, and light as well as free from feces, miasmas, and microbes. The city was a laboratory where experts involved in governing processes with biopolitical strategies and new infrastructural technologies were discovered. This paper examines the stones on which the street surfaces are paved, the underground water pipes and the sewerage network through which the wastes are drained. It looks at the contentious material-politics that lay under the infrastructures that underpin human coexistence. It addresses the material networks through which the governmental state and the population that grants it its own reality are formed. The paper draws on governmentality studies and material turn in social sciences. On the other hand, it highlights the constraints of the literature that considers sanitary infrastructures as technologies perfect for liberal governance as they are self-contained and require limited intervention. Infrastructures, mostly defined by their unnoticed nature, are visible actants of shaping state imagination in the context of Istanbul by virtue of their imperfections.