Household water insecurity and psychological distress in Eastern Ethiopia: Unfairness and water sharing as undertheorized factors

Brewis, Alexandra; Roba, Kedir Teji; Wutich, Amber; Manning, Mason; Yousuf, Jemal

doi:10.1016/j.ssmmh.2021.100008

Cited by 30 publications

(18 citation statements)

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“…In Ethiopia, Brewis et al. (2021) found that infrequent water sharing was associated with more depression/anxiety symptoms, while frequent water sharing was associated with better mental health outcomes. This recent work suggests that future research should examine more closely the nature of water‐sharing relationships—including their duration, the frequency of sharing, the full range of resources exchanged, and the nature of reciprocity—to understand their association with distress and conflict.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following those initial observations in Bolivia and the theoretical assumption that water sharing is likely happening, members of our Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) Research Coordination Network have now ethnographically identified cases of household water sharing in water-insecure communities (Brewis et al [2019] in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Uganda; Brewis et al [2021] in Ethiopia; Cole [2017] in Indonesia; Eichelberger [2010] in Alaska; Pearson, Mayer, and Bradley [2015] in Uganda; see also Schnegg and Linke [2015] in Namibia; Zug and O'Graefe [2014] in Sudan). Mostly called "water sharing" in the recent literature (Brewis et al 2021;Harris et al 2020;Roque et al 2021;Stoler et al 2019;Wutich et al 2018), the phenomenon is not yet comprehensively documented and has also been described as "water borrowing" (Rosinger et al 2020), "water transfers" (Brewis et al 2019;Zug 2014b), "water gifts" (Zug 2014a;Zug and Graefe 2014), and "reciprocal water exchanges" (Wutich 2011;Wutich and Ragsdale 2008). One collective suggestion embedded in the totality of these cases is that both givers and receivers are often uncomfortable or even distressed while sharing water (Wutich et al 2018)-just like Doña Paloma.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Mostly called “water sharing” in the recent literature (Brewis et al. 2021; Harris et al. 2020; Roque et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In urban Brazil,Jepson et al (2021) found that water-insecure households were more likely to engage in infrequent water borrowing and suggest that households lacking active, long-standing sharing relationships had to resort to stressful water borrowing during a drought. In Ethiopia,Brewis et al (2021) found that infrequent water sharing was associated with more depression/anxiety symptoms, while frequent water sharing was associated with better mental health outcomes. This recent work suggests that future research should examine more closely the nature of water-sharing relationships-including their duration, the frequency of sharing, the full range of resources exchanged, and the nature of reciprocity-to understand their association with distress and conflict.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Water sharing is a distressing form of reciprocity: Shame, upset, anger, and conflict over water in twenty cross‐cultural sites

Wutich

Rosinger

Brewis

et al. 2022

American Anthropologist

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Anthropological theories of reciprocity suggest it enhances prestige, social solidarity, and material security. Yet, some ethnographic cases suggest that water sharing—a form of reciprocity newly gaining scholarly attention—might work in the opposite way, increasing conflict and emotional distress. Using cross‐cultural survey data from twenty global sites (n = 4,267), we test how household water reciprocity (giving and receiving) is associated with negative emotional and social outcomes. Participation in water sharing as both givers and receivers is consistently associated with greater odds of reporting shame, upset, and conflict over water. Water sharing experiences in a large, diverse sample confirm a lack of alignment with predictions of classic reciprocity theories. Recent ethnographic research on reciprocity in contexts of deepening contemporary poverty will allow development of ethnographically informed theories to better explain negative experiences tied to water reciprocity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Mostly called “water sharing” in the recent literature (Brewis et al. 2021; Harris et al. 2020; Roque et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Water sharing is a distressing form of reciprocity: Shame, upset, anger, and conflict over water in twenty cross‐cultural sites

Wutich

Rosinger

Brewis

et al. 2022

American Anthropologist

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“…Women were primarily responsible for managing household water, a common finding in literature (Geere and Cortobius, 2017) and experienced various risks that men did not. There is existing evidence that women's mental health is adversely affected by household water insecurity (Brewis et al, 2021). Women also experience livelihood risks, for example, one fisherwoman reported:…”

Section: Social and Cultural Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

(Re-)orienting the Concept of Water Risk to Better Understand Inequities in Water Security

Grasham¹,

Charles²,

Abdi³

2022

Front. Water

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As populations grow and climate patterns change, difficult trade-offs in water security must be made. Re-allocation of water resources and re-distribution of water security outcomes will inevitably raise questions of equity. Equity is a central component of water security but often underemphasised, hence we still lack nuanced insights to how equity is understood and operationalised by water managers and users. The concept of risk is increasingly used in water security policy and practise but has been weakly integrated with equity considerations. We offer a contextual study that explicitly unpacks risk and inequity in water security across multiple scales; we have analysed lived water experiences and their hydrosocial drivers in a major river basin in Ethiopia. This is based on 61 interviews from seven rural kebeles, government organisations at woreda, zonal, regional and federal level and local and international NGOs as well as 17 industrial water user surveys. With our findings, and drawing on existing studies, we offer a theoretical framework for embedding water risk in equitable water security considerations. We find that when water risk is (re-)oriented from a biophysical framing, towards one centred on water-related values, it can be suitably embedded within hydrosocial framings of water security. This approach offers unique insights into how inequities are understood, within uneven power and political dynamics, which is critical for interventions that seek to deliver more equitable water security and meet social development targets.

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Moral economies for water: A framework for analyzing norms of justice, economic behavior, and social enforcement in the contexts of water inequality

et al. 2022

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Over the past two decades, scholars have invoked E. P. Thompson's and James Scott's concept of a "moral economy" to explain how people mobilize notions of justice to make claims to water. We draw together 20 years of literature to assess the state-of-the-art present in research on moral economies for water. We trace the historical foundations of the moral economies concept and its relevance to water; define the three basic components of a moral economy for water-(1) shared understandings of justice, (2) normative economic practices, (3) social pressure mechanisms-and provide examples of how they manifest globally. We then discuss how moral economies for water can cycle through four basic statesbalanced struggle, intensified reaction, mass revolt, and collapse and dissolution-at different scales. We also explore the implications of the moral economies framework for key areas of current research on water: water sharing, water commons, water markets, and biocultural outcomes, and discuss the ways in which the moral economies framework dovetails with recent advances in water research, especially the economics of water and development. We argue that the moral economies framework is a powerful explanatory tool for understanding the relationships between ideas of water justice, economic behaviors, and mechanisms of social enforcement that complements other methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives. We envision moral economies for water as a field that can facilitate a range of norm-based analyses of economic behavior and water justice, including across scales-from local to global-and in broad, integrative, multiscalar, and cross-disciplinary ways.

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Household water insecurity and psychological distress in Eastern Ethiopia: Unfairness and water sharing as undertheorized factors

Cited by 30 publications

References 39 publications

Water sharing is a distressing form of reciprocity: Shame, upset, anger, and conflict over water in twenty cross‐cultural sites

Water sharing is a distressing form of reciprocity: Shame, upset, anger, and conflict over water in twenty cross‐cultural sites

(Re-)orienting the Concept of Water Risk to Better Understand Inequities in Water Security

Moral economies for water: A framework for analyzing norms of justice, economic behavior, and social enforcement in the contexts of water inequality

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