Conflicting Discourses of Participatory Postdevelopment in Community-Led Total Sanitation

The development community perceives the current “sanitation crisis” to be remedied with water, sanitation and hygiene initiatives. While the participatory process of Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) incorporates community involvement, it still imposes globalized sanitation norms and a dominant external worldview. Using discourse analysis of the CLTS handbook, I argue that CLTS structurally advocates for continuing local hierarchies, promotes external technologies, enforces the power of outside development facilitation, and creates a new sanitation paradigm. Communities continue to resist sanitation development such as CLTS because of its top-down structure. I conclude by offering policy recommendations to improve the CLTS process