Rats and Sewers Urban Modernity Beyond the Human

This brief essay discusses how urban modernity is constructed in a more-than-human fashion, through interactions and relations between humans, infrastructure and animals. We focus on the case of Amsterdam, drawing on historical studies and on research we conducted with present-day urban residents in the rat-aected neighborhoods of Slotermeer and Rivierenbuurt and with public health professionals in 2020. We show how conceptualizations of urban modernity – and of what constitutes a bacteriologically and aesthetically clean city – are reconstituted over time, suggesting that aspirations to materialize such ideals are mediated by sewage infrastructure and rats. Historical scholarship on sanitary reform has emphasized the role of infrastructural works in reconfiguring human–nature relations in cities, as sewers helped to control and invisibilize wastewater flows. In addition, we suggest, sanitary infrastructure – sewers, but also new chemical systems – also helped shape ‘modern’ human–rat relations. In twenty-first-century Amsterdam, we see a new iteration of human–animal–infrastructure relations, as the governance of the brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) is framed in terms of coexistence rather than eradication, and an otherwise unwelcome species is being revalued for its work in keeping sewers clean.