Rethinking water insecurity, inequality and infrastructure through an embodied urban political ecology

Truelove, Yaffa

doi:10.1002/wat2.1342

Cited by 77 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Sultana (2015, p. 638) argues that research on emotions can help illuminate poorly understood dynamics of resource access and conflicts. Scholarship on the emotional dimensions of water politics is a growing field with significant implications for water resource management (e.g., Bulled, 2017;Cole, 2017;Goldin, 2010;Morales & Harris, 2014;Tremblay & Harris, 2018;Truelove, 2019;Wilson, Harris, Joseph-Rear, Beaumont, & Satterfield, 2019).…”

Section: Background: Lines Of Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Water and mental health

2020

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There is a well‐established connection among water quality, sanitation, and physical health. The potentially important relationship between water and mental health is considerably less studied. Reviewing evidence from ethnography, geography, folklore, indigenous studies, rural medicine, drought research, and large‐n statistical studies, we argue there is now good theoretical rationale and growing evidence of water insecurity as a possible driver of mental ill‐health. Furthermore, some nascent evidence suggests that emotionally meaningful interactions with water might improve mental health outcomes. Leveraging these literatures, we address the many ways in which mental health outcomes are conceptualized and operationalized in water research, including as emotional distress, perceived stress, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, somatic symptoms, and quality of life. We outline arguments supporting seven possible (and likely interlocking) mechanisms that could explain such a relationship: (a) material deprivation and related uncertainty, (b) shame of social failure, (c) worry about health threats, (d) loss of connections to people and places, (e) frustration around opportunity losses and restricted autonomy, (f) interpersonal conflict and intimate partner violence, and (g) institutional injustice or unfairness. However, we explain that as most existing studies are ethnographic, qualitative, or cross‐sectional, a causal relationship between water and mental ill‐health is yet to be confirmed empirically. More research on this topic is needed, particularly given that poorly understood connections may create barriers to achieving Sustainable Development Goals 3 (health) and 6 (water). We further suggest that tracking mental health indicators may provide unique and as‐yet underappreciated insights into the efficacy of water projects and other development interventions. This article is categorized under: Engineering Water > Water, Health, and Sanitation Human Water > Water as Imagined and Represented

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Section: Background: Lines Of Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Water and mental health

2020

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“…The relationships developed with research participants are key if we are to better understand some topics at the heart of "new" FPE research (Elmhirst 2011), including gender relations, emotional suffering, the symbolic experiences of difference, inequalities forged on the human body, and the intersectionality of various subjectivities (Buechler and Hanson 2015;Truelove 2019;Allen 2020;Faria et al 2020; Gonz alez-Hidalgo and Zografos 2020; Ham 2020). To date, the FPE literature has been relatively silent on these complex methodological issues.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Identity Enriches and Complicates the Research Process: Reflections from Political Ecology Fieldwork

Nyantakyi-Frimpong

2020

The Professional Geographer

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Among political ecologists, long-term ethnographic immersion is one of the key approaches to conducting fieldwork. This article reflects on how a researcher's identity enriches or complicates the immersed fieldwork process. Drawing on fieldwork in West Africa, it illuminates the challenges confronted when men conduct research into women's experiences. It sheds specific light on effects on the data gathering process, the data gathered, and ethical concerns. Overall, the article suggests why political ecologists need to seriously consider issues around fieldworkers' identity and the quality of fieldwork relations with research subjects. Central to the reflections here are issues concerning hermeneutic complexities, especially when research assistants are relied on to understand the everyday, embodied, and emotional aspects of nature-society relations. The article argues that although local-level social relations have long been part of political ecology research, the ability to undertake fieldwork itself is also shaped by researcher-researched social relations that are often less recognized. Although these reflections provide lessons for political ecology research more broadly, the insights here particularly seek to inform emerging work on "new" feminist political ecology, which tends to focus on data collection at less visible scales, particularly the body and the household.

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“…Our work draws on an extensive body of scholarship concerned with urban political ecology (Heynen et al ., 2006; Heynen, 2014; Ranganathan and Balazs, 2015; Heynen, 2016; 2018; Truelove, 2019b) and the politics of urban infrastructural systems (Larkin, 2013; Amin, 2014; Furlong, 2014). For von Schnitzler (2016), attention to the infrastructural can open up space for attending to politics that exist outside of normative articulations of where politics take place and by whom (see also Anand, 2017).…”

Section: The Infrastructures Of Climate Crisis In An Unequal Citymentioning

confidence: 99%

Day Zero and The Infrastructures of Climate Change: Water Governance, Inequality, and Infrastructural Politics in Cape Town's Water Crisis

Millington¹,

Scheba²

2020

Int J Urban Regional Res

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From 2015 to 2018, Cape Town, South Africa, was marked by fears of a water crisis in which the city's taps threatened to run dry. We argue in this article that Cape Town's crisis of water scarcity was a product of the convergence of ongoing contradictions in South African water governance as they came into contact with shifting infrastructural priorities associated with climate change. In its response to the possibility of a financial crisis brought on by reduced water consumption, the city withdrew the universal provision of free basic water (FBW) and reconfigured existing tariff structures. Both changes meant that the city moved further into commercialization and valuation practices in the context of restricted monetary flows. Based on an understanding of contemporary governance in South Africa as reflective of an often contradictory need to balance municipal budgets while also correcting for apartheid inequities, we argue that ongoing experiences of climate change are stretching existing municipal budgets in ways that threaten to deepen existing inequalities. Ultimately, we suggest that Cape Town's crisis is critical for understanding how climate change is reconfiguring existing governance dynamics at a planetary scale, thus offering insights into what form urban climate change adaptation may take in the future.

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Rethinking water insecurity, inequality and infrastructure through an embodied urban political ecology

Cited by 77 publications

References 45 publications

Water and mental health

Water and mental health

How Identity Enriches and Complicates the Research Process: Reflections from Political Ecology Fieldwork

Day Zero and The Infrastructures of Climate Change: Water Governance, Inequality, and Infrastructural Politics in Cape Town's Water Crisis

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