Everyday Politics of Water

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Further to its physical properties, water affects most domains of social life - religion, politics, family, law, and morality - and connects them. This level course examines contemporary water issues through a range of conceptual frameworks from political ecology, social and technology studies and law to explore ontologies of water use, hydraulic infrastructures, modes of water governance, the production of scarcity, water rights, movements and protests, water justice and climate change. Ethnography allows us to perceive how the everyday, complex relations of water users, pipelines, private companies, technicians, climatic fluctuations, ministers and NGOs and upstream countries may be intertwined at different temporal and spatial scales. As the examples traverse varying domains such as international politics, economics, law and development, we will explore these in turn.