Water and technoscientific state formation in California

Abstract

This paper argues that water gradually became, over a period of more than half a century, a critical boundary object between science and governance in California. The paper historicizes ‘water’, and argues that a series of discrete problems that involved water, particularly the reclamation of ‘swampland’ in the Sacramento Valley, gradually came to be viewed as a single ‘water problem’ with many facets. My overarching theoretical aim is to rethink the ontology of the technoscientific state through the tools of actor-network theory. I conclude with the following paradox: the more the technoscientific state forms into a complex gathering – or ‘thing’ – of which humans are part, the more it is represented and perceived as a simplified and singular actor set apart from those same humans.

Towards understanding the dynamic behaviour of floodplains as human-water systems

“…Environmental historians have demonstrated how aquatic features such as rivers are not givens but, rather, are shaped through the intertwining of human and nonhuman natures (Cioc, 2002;White, 1996;Worster, 1992). Similarly, geographers and sociologists have illustrated how hydrological processes and geo-morphological properties have been constitutive of social relations and organisation (Carroll 2012;Braun, 2000;Mosse, 2003). Sociologists, anthropologists and geographers have all shown how the hydrological properties of water are not fixed, but changed through interactions with society, both discursively for instance with the standardisation of water as H 2 O as a product of economic modernisation (Hamlin, 1990), and materially as the quality and quantity are changed through water abstraction, pollution and treatment processes (Lucklin, 1987;Tarr, 1996;Gandy, 2002).…”

Boundary objects in information science

“…activities (Macpherson et al, 2006) archival standards (Yakel, 2004) cancer (as a conceptual artefact) (Fujimura, 1992) community information (Westbrook & Finn, 2012) concepts (Langenohl, 2008;Ridenour, 2016) design concepts (Eriksson, 2008) digital literacy (Huvila, 2012b) documents (Huvila, 2012;Østerlund, 2008a) gender (Burnett et al, 2009) genre (Østerlund, 2008b) group affiliations (Lindberg & Czarniawska, 2006) information services (Huvila, 2012b) medicine (Frost et al, 2002) metaphors (Koskinen, 2005) methods (Olsen et al, 2012) musical scores (Winget, 2008) ontologies (Shepherd & Sampalli, 2012) policies (Emad & Roth, 2009) repositories and digital libraries (Star & Griesemer, 1989;Van House, 2003;Worrall, 2015) room / space (Jornet & Steier, 2015) technical standards, geographic information systems (GIS) (Harvey & Chrisman., 1998) visual representations (Henderson, 1991) water (Carroll, 2012) Organized along disciplinary lines in the fields of anthropology of design, sociology of science, and organization theory, Trompette & Vinck (2009) offer a partial inventory of research topics for which the concept BO was put to use. Their review takes account of the diverse authorship and research applications of the concept and although it is not a critical review of the literature it provides a topical map.…”

<b>Amphibious Worlds: Environments, Infrastructures, Ontologies</b>

“…Recently, a range of social studies has used water as a lens for understanding social and political situations and changes (Bakker 2010;Barnes 2012;Carroll 2012;Carse 2012;Linton 2010;Swyngedouw 2004). To situate this thematic collection, I begin by unpacking some of the assumptions of these studies and indicating some of their conceptual lacunae.…”