Tankers, wells, pipes and pumps: Agents and mediators of water geographies in Amman, Jordan

Water tankers and private wells along with the municipal piped water system have become an important feature of the techno-social assemblage of water supply in Amman, Jordan. The article takes a theoretically hybrid approach aimed at generating a conversation between actor-network theory (ANT) and the critical-realist and political-economic approaches. We undertake both ANT-inspired and then social-structural analysis of the geography of access to water in Amman. The ANT-based analysis of 'things' like tankers, wells, pipes and pumps draws attention to their relational agency in enabling or constraining access to water. The structural analyses remind us of the enduring class-, gender- and geopolitically based power relations that provide the context for the technologies, or things, to work. The key argument is that ANT is useful as a meso-level framework, which may enrich structuralist narratives on geographies of access to water. Specifically, in the case of Amman, Jordan, the inequitable access to water is linked to the history of the Jordanian state, its security imperatives and the technologies that are pressed into service to manage water

Hydro-heritage for healing? Examining the gendered experience of water in post-conflict Swat, Pakistan

Water has been formulated as a resource or a hazard within water resources geography. We propose that reframing of water as hydro-heritage opens up richer analytical possibilities for examining the pluriverses and multiple ontologies that animate gendered experience of water. We are concerned with how hydro-heritage has or could have contributed to healing in the post-conflict Swat valley of Pakistan. We highlight how the Taliban insurgency and the reconstruction following its military defeat displaced people's worlds of meaning in Swat. We find that the pre-conflict mountain springs were a site for an enchanted affective encounter between humans and non-humans, where a multifaceted gendered experience of water was enacted. The developmental imaginaries of the Pakistan state in the post-conflict reconstruction phase and the accompanying social changes deracinated water and springs from their pluriversal moorings towards ‘modern water’ with damaging material and emotional consequences for the people of Swat. This was particularly pronounced in terms of gendered access to water, health and mobility. We suggest that water as hydro-heritage has the potential to heal, provided people's worlds of meaning and experience of water are recentred in developmental imaginaries

Knowledge Priorities on Climate Change and Water in the Upper Indus Basin: A Horizon Scanning Exercise to Identify the Top 100 Research Questions in Social and Natural Sciences

River systems originating from the Upper Indus Basin (UIB) are dominated by runoff from snow and glacier melt and summer monsoonal rainfall. These water resources are highly stressed as huge populations of people living in this region depend on them, including for agriculture, domestic use, and energy production. Projections suggest that the UIB region will be affected by considerable (yet poorly quantified) changes to the seasonality and composition of runoff in the future, which are likely to have considerable impacts on these supplies. Given how directly and indirectly communities and ecosystems are dependent on these resources and the growing pressure on them due to ever-increasing demands, the impacts of climate change pose considerable adaptation challenges. The strong linkages between hydroclimate, cryosphere, water resources, and human activities within the UIB suggest that a multi- and inter-disciplinary research approach integrating the social and natural/environmental sciences is critical for successful adaptation to ongoing and future hydrological and climate change. Here we use a horizon scanning technique to identify the Top 100 questions related to the most pressing knowledge gaps and research priorities in social and natural sciences on climate change and water in the UIB. These questions are on the margins of current thinking and investigation and are clustered into 14 themes, covering three overarching topics of ‘governance, policy, and sustainable solutions’, ‘socioeconomic processes and livelihoods’, and ‘integrated Earth System processes’. Raising awareness of these cutting-edge knowledge gaps and opportunities will hopefully encourage researchers, funding bodies, practitioners, and policy makers to address them

Tankers, Wells, Pipes and Pumps:Agents and Mediators of Water Geographies in Amman, Jordan

Water tankers and private wells along with the municipal piped water system have become an important feature of the techno-social assemblage of water supply in Amman, Jordan. The article takes a theoretically hybrid approach aimed at generating a conversation between actor-network theory (ANT) and the critical-realist and political-economic approaches. We undertake both ANT-inspired and then social-structural analysis of the geography of access to water in Amman. The ANT-based analysis of 'things' like tankers, wells, pipes and pumps draws attention to their relational agency in enabling or constraining access to water. The structural analyses remind us of the enduring class-, gender- and geopolitically based power relations that provide the context for the technologies, or things, to work. The key argument is that ANT is useful as a meso-level framework, which may enrich structuralist narratives on geographies of access to water. Specifically, in the case of Amman, Jordan, the inequitable access to water is linked to the history of the Jordanian state, its security imperatives and the technologies that are pressed into service to manage water