Search

This paper is motivated by the pressing need to understand how water use and irrigated agriculture can be transformed in the interests of both social and environmental sustainability. How can such change come about? In particular, given the generally mixed results of simplified, state-initiated projects of social engineering, what is the potential for transformations in societal regimes of governance to be anchored in the everyday practices of farmers? In this paper, we address these enduring questions in novel ways. We argue that the concept of bricolage, commonly applied to analysing community management of resources, can be developed and deployed to explain broad societal processes of change. To illustrate this, we draw on case studies of irrigated agriculture in Saharan areas of Algeria and in the occupied Golan Heights in Syria. Our case analysis offers insights into how processes of institutional, technological and ideational bricolage entwine, how the state becomes implicated in them and how multiple instances of bricolage accumulate over time to produce meaningful systemic change. In concluding, however, we reflect on the greater propensity of contemporary bricolage to rebalance power relations than to open the way to more ecological farming practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we bring concepts of institutional bricolage, moral ecological rationalities and care into engagement, to explain the everyday management of an irrigation scheme in Zimbabwe. In doing this we: (a) emphasise the constant processes of bricolage through which irrigators adapt to changing circumstances and dynamically enact irrigation management; (b) illustrate some of the key features of the contemporary, hybridised moral-ecological rationalities that shape these processes of bricolage; (c) show how motivations to care (for people, the environment and infrastructure) as well as to control shape the bricolaged management arrangements. Through this approach, we aim to contribute to expanding ways of thinking about rationalities, including those that express the aspiration to live well together with human and non-human others, including water and infrastructure. The focus on moral-ecological rationalities is central to our contribution to critical water studies. This sheds light on actual practices of governing water and relationships between society-water/people and the environment. In so doing it helps us to understand the possibilities of caring for natural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with how water prospectors, well diggers, and irrigation farmers come to know groundwater. Drawing on cases from Tanzania and Zimbabwe, the paper shows that much knowledge is derived from the close encounters with groundwater that occur through hard physical work, mediated by the use of lowcost tools and technologies. In this paper we show how this knowledge is embedded in everyday livelihoods, landscapes, and moral ecological rationalities. Through empirical material of such close encounters with groundwater, we make two interrelated points. Firstly, we draw attention to the importance of embodied forms of knowledge in shaping engagements with groundwater. Frequent close physical interactions with groundwater generate rich and intimate understandings of the changing quality and quantity of water flows. These understandings become primary ways in which people in communities know water, which is lively and sometimes invisible. Secondly, we argue that, though apparently mundane, reliant on low-cost technology, and highly localised, these encounters significantly shape broader socio-natural relationships in emerging groundwater economies. Amongst other examples, our data show groundwater prospectors monitoring the depth of borehole drilling in a shared aquifer in an attempt to ensure equitable access for different users. In concluding the paper, we reflect on the extent to which the knowledge and relationships formed through close physical encounters with groundwater have the potential to shape trajectories of groundwater management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-8947.2006.00115.x Byline: Frances Cleaver (1), Anna Toner (1) Keywords: Participation; Ownership; Governance; Institutions; Rural water supply Abstract: Abstract Community participation, ownership and cost sharing are key components of Tanzania's water policy, in common with the broad international consensus on water governance. However these policy goals are difficult to achieve, beset with paradoxes and their benefits may be overstated, both in terms of efficiency of resource management and equality of outcomes. This article draws on longitudinal ethnographic research of a village water supply in Tanzania to explore two issues: the contested nature of community ownership and the complex evolution of a 'community-owned' institution. The evidence from the Uchira Water Users Association leads us to question some of the simplistic assumptions made concerning the capacity of local communities to manage service delivery and to balance equity and sustainability principles. The limitations of 'bottom-up' and demand led approaches need to be recognised without discrediting their potential for challenging inequalities. The article concludes with a consideration of some of the tensions in community-driven development, which raises some important questions about the role of the State and external agencies in setting and enforcing equity criteria in community-managed initiatives. Author Affiliation: (1)Bradford Centre for International Development, University of Bradford, UK

This paper draws on ethnographic research in Tanzania to question ideas inherent to mainstream development policy that building social capital can be readily created, used, or substituted for other missing assets, and thereby overcome poverty. The poorest experience clusters of interlocking disadvantage that make it highly unlikely that they can draw on social capital to ameliorate their poverty, or that increased association and participation at community level is necessarily beneficial to them. Moreover, social relationships, collective action, and local institutions may structurally reproduce the exclusion of the poorest. As such, a politically neutral and undersocialized policy focus on strengthening associational life and public participation of the poor is unlikely to lead to their greater inclusion, nor to significant poverty alleviation. Key words--chronic poverty, social capital, Tanzania, agency

In this paper, we focus on changes made in the form and materiality of water infrastructure in a smallholder irrigation scheme in Zimbabwe. We use this focus on sociotechnical tinkering as a practical entry point to exploring how these changes matter in shaping knowledges and relationships in irrigated agriculture. Drawing on data collected through ethnographic methods, we show how history and politics matter in shaping the possibilities of rearranging infrastructure. Equally important are the knowledge-laden, embodied and discursive practices of the farmers, operators and engineers who engage with infrastructure. We argue that through the knowledges, creativity and agency of people interacting with irrigation infrastructure, water as well as power are (re)defined and (re)distributed in subtle and often unexpected, yet significant, ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article highlights one important reason why attempts to achieve sustainable development through community management often fail - the neglect of worldviews. It addresses a gap in existing research on institutional bricolage by focussing on the core role that beliefs and rationales play in resource governance. Our research into rural water supply in Malawi and Uganda was conducted through a variety of ethnographic methods including year-long community diaries. Drawing on this, we demonstrate how worldviews shape local water management arrangements and their outcomes. We unpick three dimensions of the work that worldviews do In (1) making sense of socio-natural events and processes, (2) maintaining unequal social orders, and (3) serving as resources for institutional arrangements. The article concludes with a reflection on how our approach meaningfully furthers critical water studies, and on the challenges faced by development initiatives in operationalising such insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Donor agencies have been recognizing the vital role of women in the water and sanitation sectors since the 1980s, but find it difficult to implement the gender policies through their programs. Thus, technical aspects of water supply get more attention as compared to social components. The data on sex and gender issues in the project evaluation reports are hardly noticeable. Financial data regarding resource allocation to gender specific activities are also scarce. Mechanisms for successful allocation of adequate resources for gender strategies in social sector projects are discussed.