Attention to sociotechnical tinkering with irrigation infrastructure as a way to rethink water governance

Inspired by the proposal of political scientists and anthropologists to focus on “practice” as the smallest unit of analysis for understanding politics, as well as the renewed scholarly attention to materiality, this paper sets out to show that detailed ethnographic attention to processes and acts of sociotechnical tinkering provides a useful entry-point for understanding water governance. This is so methodologically, because infrastructural forms of tinkering are very visible, and therefore researchable, manifestations of agency and change in water governance. Attention to sociotechnical tinkering helps shift the basis for understanding water realities from official norms, designs and laws to everyday practices. This in turn allows questioning, rather than assuming, how expertise and agency are exercised and distributed in water governance, thereby also providing useful information for re-thinking water politics. In addition, by explicitly engaging with the contingency and capriciousness of actual water flows, a sociotechnical tinkering approach entails a much-needed re-appreciation of the materiality of water, infrastructure and other matter, a re-appreciation that extends to those who design, construct, operate and use water infrastructure

Policies lost in translation? Unravelling water reform processes in African waterscapes

Since the 1980s a major change took place in public policies for water resources management. The role of governments shifted under this reform process from an emphasis on investment in the development, operation and maintenance of water infrastructure to a focus on managing water resources systems by stipulating general frameworks and defining key principles for water allocation. This interdisciplinary research examines how this water reform process unfolds within four African waterscapes that are historically constituted by natural and social processes. The qualitative study analyzes the interplay between public policies designed and implemented by government agencies and the institutions that govern access to and control over water resources among groups of agricultural water users. The findings of this research show that the water reform policies have led to similar outcomes in dissimilar contexts and that water policy only to a limited extent lead to progressive institutional change concerning agricultural water use, especially in this neoliberal era. Moreover, this research shows that excluding targeted investments in the development of hydraulic infrastructure for historically disadvantaged groups has severely narrowed the options of the governments to redress the colonial legacy and the capacity of small-scale farmers to move their livelihood beyond subsistence.Water ManagementCivil Engineering and Geoscience

Water Infrastructure Always In-the-Making: Distributing Water and Authority through the Water Supply Network in Moamba, Mozambique

Using the concept of sociotechnical tinkering, this paper provides detailed empirical observations about the everyday practices of design, construction, operation, maintenance and use of a piped water supply network in a small town in Mozambique. We use these to show that the form, materiality, and functioning of this water infrastructure are constantly changing as result of interactions with its physical environment as well as in response to experimentation and improvisation by engineers, construction workers, operators and water users. Sociotechnical tinkering not just (re)distributes water, but also provides an avenue through which powers to control water flows can be wielded and exercised. In this sense, empirical attention to sociotechnical tinkering provides a useful entry-point for rethinking the distribution of control, authority and responsibility in water governance, or more broadly the relations between power and infrastructure. This, in turn, may yield new inspirations for identifying pragmatic possibilities for progressive water politics

Jumping the water queue : Changing waterscapes under water reform processes in rural Zimbabwe

This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion on the implementation of water reforms in rural African waterscapes and explores how farmers in a tertiary catchment in Zimbabwe react to these reforms. It shows how privileged farmers have jumped the water queue by moving their agricultural activities upstream where they illegally divert water straight from the river, while downstream, in the smallholder irrigation scheme, farmers resort to rainfed farming. This unforeseen consequence of the 1998 water reform process, implemented during the economically unstable decade that followed, is explained by adopting a socio-nature approach. Empirical field data as well as processed satellite images are presented and the politicized implications of water reform processes in the Zimbabwean context are discussed. Besides the need to critically examine the content of water reform processes, more attention is needed for understanding what happens to the water that escapes stipulated plans, prescribed rules of control and visible decision-making arenas

Caught in the middle? Access to water in the rural to urban transformation of Bushenyi-Ishaka municipality, Uganda

This paper aims to contribute to the relatively few empirical studies done on how processes of urbanization affect water supply in smaller towns by providing an in-depth case study of Bushenyi-Ishaka municipality in Uganda. The paper shows how changes in water service provision as a result of the rural to urban transformation of the area differently affect various groups of water users in their access to water. Based on this research, the authors question the process of categorization and labelling in public service delivery, especially rigidly distinguishing between urban and rural water infrastructures and management models, as it often (re)produces binaries and potentially creates structural inequities. Building further on literature focusing on understanding and dealing with complexity, the paper calls for more empirical research to document everyday practices of providing and accessing water in changing environments in the hope to ultimately inform more effective policy interventions that aim for equity in water distributions