Kemerink-Seyoum, J.S., Chitata, T., Guzmán, C.D. et al. (2 more authors) (2019) Attention to sociotechnical tinkering with irrigation infrastructure as a way to rethink water governance. Water, 11 (8).
Abstract
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.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 The Authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | irrigation; smallholder farmers; water infrastructure; practices; materiality |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Geography (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 23 Aug 2019 09:50 |
Last Modified: | 23 Aug 2019 09:50 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | MDPI AG |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.3390/w11081670 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:150034 |