Sustainability and the politics of calculation: technologies of 'safe water,' subject-making, and domination

Abstract

This paper critically examines sustainability as an ideology that gives meaning to processes of domination occurring through the operations of treated water systems in Iñupiaq villages in Alaska's Northwest. The implementation of neoliberal sustainability policies shapes social relations around water, establishes particular forms of 'expert' knowledge, erases experiences of water insecurity, and renders moot local opposition to charging for water. Throughout, treated 'safe water' is signified as a scarce commodity; its production requiring full cost recovery through practices of calculation that discipline Iñupiaq citizens as consumers. This paper provides a case study for understanding some of the processes of domination through which the commodification of water occurs, and how local people who otherwise oppose these processes may nonetheless become drawn into practices of calculation and domination in an attempt to meet state-defined sustainability requirements.Key words: Sustainability, water insecurity, domination, Alaska Natives

The politics of numbers and additionality governing the national Payment for Forest Environmental Services scheme in Vietnam: A case study from Son La province

“…Furthermore, even when data is available, politics can influence data collection approaches, processes, and outcomes (Rose, 1991;Alonso and Starr, 1987). As we have also shown, data can be designed to meet actors' defined political objectives (Eichelberger, 2012), and official statistics can function as an outcome of sociopolitical processes (Desrosières, 2010;Rosa da Conceição et al, 2018). The fact that the published official data is further filtered by political leaders in Son La sheds additional accuracy challenges in determining the reliability of results on PFES impact as it reflects a particular government agenda in demonstrating the increase in forest cover over time.…”

The embedded economics of water: Insights from economic anthropology

“…Analyses that focus on how humans acquire and use water are thus considered in the context of how people conceptualize and value water. Often, embedded economic research on water mobilizes a critical lens to highlight the disruption and destruction of local, socioecological practices for provisioning and using water (like those grounded in indigenous knowledge) via larger structural forces like imperialism, settler colonialism, militarism, and racial capitalism (Eichelberger, 2012; Hoover, 2017; Johnston et al, 2011; McGregor, 2004; Wilson, 2014). Recent embedded economic research on water employs cross‐cultural and comparative research designs to build towards broader theories of water and economy (e.g., Brewis et al, 2019; du Bray, Stotts, Beresford, Wutich, & Brewis, 2019; Stoler et al, 2020; Wutich & Brewis, 2014, 2019).…”

“…Nevertheless, many people accept the view of water as a commodity (Bakker, 2007), as evidenced by the rapid rise of the bottled water industry (Kaplan, 2007; Pacheco‐Vega, 2019; Wilk, 2006). Anthropologists have explained the historical processes that gave rise to the commodification of water, arguing that commodification dis embeds water from traditional social and cultural meanings and re embeds it into the cultural logic of modern science and neoliberal capitalism (Ballestero, 2019a; Eichelberger, 2012; Johnston et al, 2011; Strang, 2004). Other research, however, shows that even when people conceptualize water as a commodity, the process of assigning it monetary value can be fraught with difficulty given the role that water plays in solidifying social relations, creating recreation and joy, or marking cultural heritage (Chan, Satterfield, & Goldstein, 2012; du Bray et al, 2019).…”

The economic anthropology of water

“…Environmentality is a framework for examining how changing environmental institutions, politics, and knowledge produce new forms of environmental subjectivity (Agrawal ). Anthropologists have explored the production of new environmental subjectivities in the contexts of water sustainability policies in a water‐insecure Iñupiaq village in Alaska (Eichelberger ), hydroelectric dam development along the Ganges in the Indian Himalayas (Drew ), and the adoption of wastewater technologies in a Belizean coastal region catering to cruise ship tourists (Wells et al ). Environmentality has been influential in shaping recent anthropological scholarship on water, as in articles in this special issue by Wells et al () and Radonic ().…”