A Theoretical Walk through the Political Economy of Urban Water Resource Management

Abstract

The political economy of urban water management demands the interrogation of a highly socialised and engineered space. Many approaches are available to the researcher, yet they are often based on their own claims concerning the nature of society and space, which are contradictory and incommensurate with the next. This makes a synthesis of theory problematic, suggesting an 'either/or' decision to the researcher. This paper provides a critical genealogy of theoretical approaches to the political economy of urban water management and a framework through which their synthesis may be discussed. It employs a critical realist philosophy, mapping each approach to its respective ontological and epistemic grounding. A metaphorical 'walk' is then taken across the resulting map in order to provide a coherent and logical survey of theory. Finally, critical realism is employed to argue that struggles to synthesise theory are rooted in their competing ontological claims. Critical realism and in particular Bob Jessop's Strategic Relational Approach are assessed as means of reconciling tensions uncovered during the walk.

Green Infrastructure, Grey Epistemologies, and the Urban Political Ecology of Pittsburgh's Water Governance

“…If we engage this politics of knowledge/expertise, we find that water crises are easily reduced to their technical and bio‐physical dimensions rather than the more complex nature of hydro‐social relations (Budds ; Castro ; Dicks ; Walker ). This reduction hides yet creates demand for the elite, insider knowledge of civil engineers, managers, and planners to solve these problems.…”

Spatial Practices and the Institutionalization of Water Sanitation Services in Southern Metropolises: The case of Jakarta and its Kampung Kojan

“…First, the framework is intended to explain the (re)production of agency and institutions within overlapping and scalarly articulated territories for water‐related services that embed various forms of informality. Informal practices and processes are not only impregnated by local dynamics, they also articulate with the multi‐scalar socio‐economic system (Castells and Portes, ; Mingione, ; Kesteloot and Meert, ) and the complex socio‐ecological system in which the latter is embedded (Walker, ). Echoing Mingione (), Kesteloot and Meert () argue that through such articulation, variation in the informalization of economic relations increases at the local scale.…”

“…In the light of these analytical concerns, this article disentangles the varying informalities embedded in the urban water and water sanitation sector using a framework with three interrelated layers of explanation. The framework directly or indirectly makes use of theories in political economy (Bakker, ; Walker, ), political ecology (Swyngedouw et al, ; Swyngedouw, ), scalar geography (Swyngedouw, ; Brenner, ; Jonas, ) and territorial development (Moulaert and Nussbaumer, ) as well as the institutional and cultural turns these theories have adopted (Moulaert et al ., ).…”