Colonialism and its legacies, as reflected in water, incorporating a view from Malawi

Abstract

Continued, accelerating water inequalities and conflicts in the postcolonial world cannot be properly grasped without a thorough understanding of colonialism and its legacies. At the same time, water as a resource provides an immensely useful lens for understanding the intricacies and the dynamics of the colonial and postcolonial eras, in general terms, and in the particular historical instance of Malawi examined here. This essay draws on a range of literatures—social theory, political ecology, history, anthropology, sociology, geography, and so on—to demonstrate that struggles over water and other natural resources in the postcolonial world are situated within wider global structures and relationships of power. Starting with a discussion of theoretical approaches to water, the essay goes on to examine the processes of state formation in Sub‐Saharan Africa, and explore the intersectionality of the contemporary lived experience of class, gender, race, and ethnicity in this region. It ends with a consideration of social differentiation, land tenure, degradation of water resources and natural resource conflict in Malawi. Traversing across humanities and social science disciplines, this essay uses water as a means of cutting a path through world historical questions on the articulations between the global and the local in the present era. This article is categorized under: Human Water > Water Governance Human Water > Water as Imagined and Represented

A Transdisciplinary Methodology for Introducing Solar Water Disinfection to Rural Communities in Malawi—Formative Research Findings

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Longitudinal borehole functionality in 15 rural Ghanaian towns from three groundwater quality clusters

“…Historically, government resources in sub-Saharan African countries have been insufficient to repeat large-scale data collection efforts and track infrastructure over time [ 15 ], partly, due to legacies of colonialism still impacting present-day water systems [ 22 , 23 ]. More recently, there is a shift toward mapping and monitoring of existing water supplies.…”

Water colonialism and Indigenous water justice in south-eastern Australia

“…This relational and contextualized approach to understanding water justice is also sensitive to how diverse peoples see, define, relate to and understand water and water justice (Boelens et al, 2018;Joy et al, 2014;Yaka, 2019;Zwarteveen & Boelens, 2014). It pays attention to the broader social, political and economic injustices in which water injustices are historically and contemporarily embedded (Joshi, 2015;Lynch et al, 2013;Mathur & Mulwafu, 2018;Sultana, 2018).…”

“…Water colonialism describes situations of past, present and ongoing acts, institutions, decision-making processes, physical interventions, discourses, narratives and paradigms that continue to marginalize and exclude Indigenous peoples. Although water colonialism as described by Robison et al draws from observations across particular settler-colonial nations (the United States, Canada and Australia), evidence suggests that water colonialism is experienced in other colonial contexts, such as South Asia (D'Souza, 2006) and Malawi (Mathur & Mulwafu, 2018). Recent work also indicates that emerging norms of supra-national water governance perpetuate conditions of water colonialism (e.g., Taylor et al, 2019).…”