The embedded economics of water: Insights from economic anthropology

Abstract

Over the past two decades, scholars and policy makers have promoted the idea that water can be analyzed and managed according to the principles of economics. Yet, many policy prescriptions based on economic principles have struggled to deliver the results they intend. As such, scholars note the need for alternative approaches to understanding water economies, and many propose that embedded economic perspectives are able to give more holistic and locally grounded insights. In this article, I explain the embedded economic perspective, how it is different from a conventional economic perspective, and how the embedded economics of water makes important contributions to understanding water economies more broadly. I highlight three key areas of embedded economic insight on water derived from recent scholarship in economic anthropology: human meanings and values for water, nonmarket water exchanges, and diverse water economies. I conclude by discussing implications these insights have for interdisciplinary water scholarship. This article is categorized under: Human Water > Value of Water Human Water > Rights to Water Human Water > Methods

Water sharing is a distressing form of reciprocity: Shame, upset, anger, and conflict over water in twenty cross‐cultural sites

“…2012; Scheper‐Hughes 1992). Cultural values placed on shared water are different from those placed on other resources (Beresford 2020; Wilson et al. 2019; Wutich and Beresford 2019).…”

“…Unlike other commonly shared household resources (e.g., labor, food), water scarcity can quickly create life‐threatening thirst and dehydration (Wutich and Brewis 2014). The cross‐cultural belief that “water is life” (Hellum, Kameri‐Mbote, and van Koppen 2015) suggests that water may be perceived as a uniquely precious resource (Beresford 2020). If so, water's unique value may make the stakes of water sharing higher than other forms of resource sharing—and may help explain its widespread association with distress and conflict.…”

“…In food sharing, for example, shame is felt when someone shares a culturally devalued food (Hadley et al 2012;Scheper-Hughes 1992). Cultural values placed on shared water are different from those placed on other resources (Beresford 2020;Wilson et al 2019;Wutich and Beresford 2019).…”

Global Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Approaches: Anthropological Contributions and Future Directions for Engineering

“…Anthropologists critique the systems of development that produce and reproduce water problems, and these scholars often promote a critical review of the schemas for both infrastructure development and water provision (Johnston et al , 2012 ). The valuation of water is often tangled with infrastructural considerations; social scientists have addressed intricacies of when, how, and why water is used (Gleick, 2003 ), commodified (or not) (Bakker, 2007; Teodoro, 2018 ), and how this toggles with the costs and realities of infrastructural decision making (Von Schnitzler, 2013 ; Beresford, 2020 ). In South Africa, citizenship (one's position vis-a-vis the State) is created through a person's relationship with water and sanitation infrastructures, inter alia (Lemanski, 2019 ).…”

Rethinking entrepreneurship through distribution: distributive relations and the reproduction of racialized inequality among South African entrepreneurs

“…Although dominant economic thinking purports that production is the primary activity through which people secure such resources (i.e. people engage in productive labour to earn money and purchase what they need on the market), more embedded understandings of economics remind us that people most often acquire what they need directly from other people – via care work, gifts, transfers, trades, barters, and so on (Beresford 2020 a ; Fraser 2014; Gibson‐Graham 1996; González de la Rocha 1994; Lomnitz 1988; Reese 2019; Sangaramoorthy 2018). These kinds of distributive activities, which mostly take place outside of impersonal market exchange, provide the foundations necessary for production.…”