Back on the water margin: the ethical fixes of sustainable water provisions in rural China

Pia, Andrea E.

doi:10.1111/1467-9655.12547

Cited by 16 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 47 publications

(39 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Yang, N g (2017), "Water politics and religious practices in Kangding",Himalaya Vol 37,No 1, 5. Pia, a E (2017), "Back on the water margin: the ethical fixes of sustainable water provisions in rural China", Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Vol 23,No 1,. Boland, a (2007), "the trickledown effect: ideology and the development of premium water networks in China's cities", International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Vol 31,No 1,.…”

Section: Conceptual Framework: a Social Practice Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Everyday practices and technologies of household water consumption: evidence from Shanghai

Zhen¹,

Rogers²,

Barnett³

2018

Environment and Urbanization

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A social practice approach to household consumption examines socially produced patterns of practice, and understands these to be composed of technology, knowledge and meaning. This approach challenges many of the assumptions made about how consumers who are supposedly economically rational behave in large-scale municipal water supply systems. Yet for an emerging body of scholarship that is sensitive to the effects of context, research on social practices is notably short of studies beyond wealthy liberal democracies. In this paper we examine the key practices of daily water consumption for households in Shanghai, China. We identify boiling water, filtering water, and buying water as the three key practices associated with daily water consumption in the home, and explain the way each is the result of combinations of knowledge, meaning and technology. We also consider short-term and longer-term shifts in practices, and explain the influence of the materiality of pollution, information and trust on these changing practices. KEywordS China / Shanghai / social practice / urban water supply / water consumption / water pollution I. IntroductIon China is a particularly compelling place to study the social practices of water consumption. It has a rapidly growing urban middle class with changing consumption patterns, it has built mega water supply and storage projects to ensure the water security of cities like Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai, and it has widespread pollution problems. While there is a growing body of social science research that asks questions about how water is supplied and managed in China, this literature is largely framed by questions of power, institutional change, and techno-natures. (1) Specific to Shanghai, there are many studies that consider drinking water contamination and treatment (2) or risks to water security, (3) but very little discussion of how individuals or groups of people actually use drinking water. Beyond Shanghai, studies that consider Tibetan ceremonial uses of water, (4) the work of local bureaucrats in trying to secure drinking water for rural communities, (5) and the hydrosocial relations of premium supply networks (6) only incidentally touch on some of the questions raised by practice theory. In this paper we draw on the idea of embodied, materially interwoven practices, organized around shared practical understanding, (7) to examine nahui Zhen (corresponding author) is a human geographer who completed her Phd in Geography at the university of Melbourne in 2017. Her research focuses on the governance of natural resources and human-environment relations in china.

show abstract

Section: Conceptual Framework: a Social Practice Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Everyday practices and technologies of household water consumption: evidence from Shanghai

Zhen¹,

Rogers²,

Barnett³

2018

Environment and Urbanization

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The quick‐fix response that he identifies as a feature of contemporary US crisis cycles has parallels elsewhere, such as in the ethical practices of bureaucrats in China who must make daily quick‐fix compromises to deliver increasingly scarce water to the residents of their rural district. These quick fixes, Andrea Pia () argues, are the best possible options available to the minimally powerful bureaucrats she studies yet ultimately reinforce or even exacerbate the environmental degradation that provokes water crises in the first place. Focusing on the role of both media and critical theory, Masco argues that a discursive preoccupation with precarity likewise leaves the status quo of crisis cycles intact; this is crisis on a constant loop, resonant with what Irene Calis () describes as routine disorder.…”

Section: Temporality Mobility and Sovereigntymentioning

confidence: 99%

Time and Relational Possibility: Cultural Anthropology in 2017

Tamarkin

2018

American Anthropologist

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This essay reviews work produced in predominantly US cultural anthropology publications throughout 2017. It asks: What makes an anthropological inquiry timely, what sorts of relationalities command anthropological attention, and to what end? Noting our ongoing methodological commitment to long-term ethnography alongside increasingly important online forums for reaching broader publics and responding quickly to emerging issues, it expands the range of work surveyed to include some online-only short essays alongside the larger collection of traditionally published research articles. Characterized by empathic inquiry, frequently drawing on years of ethnographic and personal experience with the places, people, and other entities that we write about, and often attentive to histories at multiple scales, cultural anthropology of this moment, however published, grapples with dark times while it also offers ways of imagining other, better futures and ways of being in relation to others. Two thematic clusters organize this essay: the first considers temporality alongside mobility and sovereignty, and the second considers relationality alongside subjectivity and mediation. Together, all of these concerns-that are both of the moment and long standing-build a varied body of work that grapples with the interrelationalities that constitute power, place, and possibility. I argue that what makes an anthropological inquiry timely is the extent to which it is relationally informed and attuned to care for worlds that we inhabit and imagine, together. [year in review, sociocultural anthropology, temporality, mobility, sovereignty, relationality, subjectivity, mediation] RESUMEN Este ensayo revisa el trabajo producido en publicaciones de antropología cultural predominantemente estadounidenses durante 2017. Pregunta: ¿Qué hace la investigación antropológica oportuna, y qué tipos de relacionalidades comandan la atención antropológica, y con qué fin? Notando nuestro compromiso metodológico continuo con una etnografía de largo plazo junto a foros en línea cada vez más importantes para llegar a públicos más amplios y respondiendo rápidamente a cuestiones emergentes, expande el rango del trabajo evaluado para incluir algunos ensayos cortos sólo en línea junto a la mayor colección de artículos de investigación publicados tradicionalmente. Caracterizada por una investigación empática, frecuentemente extrayendo de años de experiencia etnográfica y personal con los lugares, la gente, y otras entidades sobre las que escribimos, y a menudo atentos a historias a escalas múltiples, la antropología cultural de este momento, independientemente de cómo sea publicada, lucha contra tiempos oscuros mientras ofrece maneras de imaginar otros, mejores futuros y formas de estar en relación con otros. Dos grupos temáticos organizan este ensayo: el primero considera temporalidad junto a movilidad y soberanía, y el segundo considera relacionalidad junto a subjetividad y mediación. Juntas, todas estas preocupaciones-que son tanto del momento como de larga d...

show abstract

“…RCS is setting the water quality and river course management as one of the important assessment contents of local leaders. Pia (2017) claims that an accountability review process offers a ray of sunshine and a turning point toward a greater accountability in the government [34]. Under the accountability mechanism, the sense of service of river chiefs and the administrative efficiency of local pollution control have been improved to some extent [35].…”

Section: Assessment and Accountability Mechanism Of Rcsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking Environmental Bureaucracies in River Chiefs System (RCS) in China: A Critical Literature Study

Huang

2019

Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Efforts to understand the political complexities of water governance must include critical hierarchical or bureaucratical perspectives. The River Chiefs System, China’s national mechanism which has evolved from local attempts, values more political control than governance efficiency. Water governance, which is regarded as a political task, is allocated from river chiefs at higher levels to lower levels. The River Chiefs System stipulates that local river chiefs fully mobilize and integrate various technical and administrative forces to achieve environmental goals. However, the strengthening of local authority enables local river chiefs to combat or eliminate state power. Although public involvement in the River Chiefs System is encouraged to some extent, “government-dependent” public participation hardly ensures real public involvement and supervision.

show abstract

Back on the water margin: the ethical fixes of sustainable water provisions in rural China

Cited by 16 publications

References 47 publications

Everyday practices and technologies of household water consumption: evidence from Shanghai

Everyday practices and technologies of household water consumption: evidence from Shanghai

Time and Relational Possibility: Cultural Anthropology in 2017

Rethinking Environmental Bureaucracies in River Chiefs System (RCS) in China: A Critical Literature Study

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About