In this article we draw on an interdisciplinary study on drinking water quality in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, to examine the nature, scale, and politics of waterborne diseases. We show how water contamination and related diseases are discursively framed as household risks, thereby concealing the politics of uneven exposure to contaminated water and placing the burden of being healthy on individuals. In contrast, we propose that uneven geographies of waterborne diseases are best understood as the product of Maputo’s urban metabolism, in which attempts at being sanitary and healthy are caught up in relations of power, class, and variegated citizenship. Waterborne diseases are the result of complex and fragmented circulations and intersections of (waste)waters, generated by uneven urban development, heterogeneous infrastructure configurations, and everyday practices to cope with basic service deficits, in conjunction with increasing climatic variability. The latrine—from which ultimately contamination and diseases spread—is an outcome of these processes, rather than the site to be blamed. This article also advances an interdisciplinary framework for analyzing urban metabolism and deepening its explanatory potential. It serves as a demonstration of how interdisciplinary approaches might be taken forward to generate new readings of more-than-human metabolic processes at distinct temporal and spatial scales.

在本文中，我们利用对莫桑比克首都马普托饮用水质量的跨学科研究来研究水传播疾病的性质、规模和政治。我们展示了水污染和相关疾病如何被广泛地描述为家庭风险，从而掩盖了不均衡地接触受污染水的政治因素，并将健康的负担置于个人身上。相比之下，我们建议将水传播疾病的不平衡地理最好理解为马普托城市新陈代谢的产物，在这种新陈代谢中，卫生和健康的尝试陷入了权力、阶级和多样化的公民关系中。水传播疾病是复杂和分散的循环和（废水）水交叉的结果，由不平衡的城市发展、异构的基础设施配置、以及应对基本服务不足的日常实践，以及不断增加的气候变化。厕所——最终污染和疾病传播的地方——是这些过程的结果，而不是被指责的地方。本文还提出了一个跨学科框架，用于分析城市新陈代谢并加深其解释潜力。它展示了如何推进跨学科方法，以在不同的时间和空间尺度上对超越人类的代谢过程产生新的解读。本文还提出了一个跨学科框架，用于分析城市新陈代谢并加深其解释潜力。它展示了如何推进跨学科方法，以在不同的时间和空间尺度上对超越人类的代谢过程产生新的解读。本文还提出了一个跨学科框架，用于分析城市新陈代谢并加深其解释潜力。它展示了如何推进跨学科方法，以在不同的时间和空间尺度上对超越人类的代谢过程产生新的解读。