The Power of Water: Developing Dialogues between Foucault and Gramsci

Ekers, Michael; Loftus, Alex

doi:10.1068/d5907

Cited by 158 publications

(136 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…On this regard, Lefebvre argues that the politics of everyday life connects, through specific relationships of production and reproduction, the broad practices regulated by the state with various forms of human subjectivity (in Kiel, 2002). The multiplicity of water meanings in the contemporary world goes beyond simplistic micro-scale and cultural considerations but embraces the distinctive subjectivities and the politics and praxis of everyday life associated with other scales of human agency (Ekers and Loftus, 2008). In the end, the multiple expressions of value that form a given positionality reflect a perpetual process of reflexivity and experimentation that characterises the politicised interaction between social groups.…”

Section: Value Positionality: a Relational Integration Through Praxismentioning

confidence: 99%

The Positioned Construction of Water Values: Pluralism, Positionality and Praxis

Ioris¹

2012

Environmental Values

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Water values serve as an entry point into the intricacies of public policies and management approaches. Values are contingent assessments that emerge out of socio-ecological relations and reflect particular demands, legacies and opportunities. The concept of value positionality is introduced as the synthesis of multiple expressions of worthiness cherished by a social group. Positionality is a metaphor that connects the phenomenological understanding of water value with the politics of everyday life and the broader politico-institutional framework. Positionality entails a cluster of meanings expressed through territorialized interactions across time, locations and scales. Positionalities converge or depart according to value praxis, that is, the clash of competing valuation approaches seeking legitimisation.

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Section: Value Positionality: a Relational Integration Through Praxismentioning

confidence: 99%

The Positioned Construction of Water Values: Pluralism, Positionality and Praxis

Ioris¹

2012

Environmental Values

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“…That is, it requires recognition of the multiple ways in which carbon is related to the city and rendered governable, beyond notions of carbon economies and related accounting metrics 2 . Second, and relatedly, we argue that understanding urban governance of (and through) carbon requires us, explicitly, to view 'the state' and its powers of rule as distributed (Ekers and Loftus, 2008;Okereke et al, 2009), accepting the wide array of entities through which the urban governance of carbon is achieved. In governing carbon, states (attempt to) orchestrate relations with non-state actors in the private sector and civil society to achieve governmental objectives through an array of political practices of shared governance that extend beyond relations of coercion and contract (see Li, 2007;Perkins, 2009 Guirk and O'Neill, 2012).…”

Section: Hegemonic Projects In-the-making: Governmental Programs and mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The neo-Gramscian 1 approach focuses on the processes and dynamic configurations involved in constituting and reproducing hegemonic governance forms, relations and purposes, while governmentality analysis aims to identify the logics and assemblage of practices (problematisations, mechanisms, subjectivisations) and entities through which governance towards particular ends is mobilised. Notwithstanding ontological differences between neo-Gramscian and Foucauldian perspectives we, like others (Jessop, 2007;Li, 2007;Ekers and Loftus, 2008;Okereke et al, 2009;Bulkeley and Schroeder, 2012), find this a productive theoretical ground for probing questions about the sedimented and shifting practices, processes, entities and relations through which urban carbon governance is being made (and remade).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practices, programs and projects of urban carbon governance: Perspectives from the Australian city

2014

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This paper addresses the governance of transitions to lower carbon cities. Drawing on both governmentality and neo-Gramscian perspectives, we chart and explore the diverse objects, subjects, means and ends evoked as governmental programs, or hegemonic projects in-the-making, are shaped to orchestrate urban carbon governance. We ask about the diversity of what is being sought through the governance of carbon in the city, how this is rendered and how carbon is being made to matter in the city. We do so through analysis of an audit of carbon governance initiatives in Australian cities, and a characterisation of these initiatives as four distinctive governmental programs. To make sense of the diverse ecology of initiatives revealed, we adopt a typological approach to suggest four distinctive governmental programs-Behaviour change; Demonstration; Transition; and Advocacy. We suggest that Australia's emergent landscape of urban carbon governance both reproduces existing governance orderings and contains openings-via fragile emergent hegemonic projects-that might produce more transformative orderings: not least because of the demands and politics the low carbon subjects being invoked might be empowered to pursue but also because of the potential reconfiguration of the 'integral state' as new governmental programs are imagined and enacted. Abstract: This paper addresses the governance of transitions to lower carbon cities. Drawing on both governmentality and neo-Gramscian perspectives, we chart and explore the diverse objects, subjects, means and ends evoked as governmental programs, or hegemonic projects in-the-making, are shaped to orchestrate urban carbon governance. We ask about the diversity of what is being sought through the governance of carbon in the city, how this is rendered and how carbon is being made to matter in the city. We do so through analysis of an audit of carbon governance initiatives in Australian cities, and a characterisation of these initiatives as four distinctive governmental programs. To make sense of the diverse ecology of initiatives revealed, we adopt a typological approach to suggest four distinctive governmental programs -Behaviour change; Demonstration; Transition; and Advocacy. We suggest that Australia's emergent landscape of urban carbon governance both reproduces existing governance orderings and contains openings -via fragile emergent hegemonic projects-that might produce more transformative orderings: not least because of the demands and politics the low carbon subjects being invoked might be empowered to pursue but also because of the potential reconfiguration of the 'integral state' as new governmental programs are imagined and enacted.

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“…Such a focus shifts emphasis on the forces that "choreograph access and exclusion to water" by explicitly calling out the role of power "circulating through the socio-hydraulic landscape" (Swyngedouw, 2009, p. 59), including both hegemonic forms of domination and the more subtle capillaries of rule (Ekers & Loftus, 2008). UPE studies, for instance, have traced the structural political economy of capital and commodity flows and the class, gender, and racial/ethnic struggles that define relations of access (Bakker, 2010;Gandy, 2004;Swyngedouw, 2004), as well as the effects of colonial and post-colonial governmentalities (Gandy, 2008;Kooy & Bakker, 2008).…”

Section: Defining the Urban Fringe Across The North And Southmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water marginalization at the urban fringe: environmental justice and urban political ecology across the North–South divide

2015

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This article reconsiders the epistemic and geographic boundaries that have long separated scholarship on urban water poverty and politics in the Global North and South. We stage an encounter between the seemingly dissimilar cases of Tooleville outside of the city of Exeter in California's Central Valley and Bommanahalli outside of Bangalore, India, to illuminate the geography of water marginalization at the fringes of urban areas, and to deepen cross-fertilization between two geographic literatures: environmental justice (EJ) and urban political ecology (UPE). We argue that there is scope for transnational learning in three arenas in particular: (1) water access, (2) state practice, and (3) political agency. In so doing, we aim to advance a genuinely postcolonial approach to theory and practice in the pressing arena of urban water politics.

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The Power of Water: Developing Dialogues between Foucault and Gramsci

Cited by 158 publications

References 62 publications

The Positioned Construction of Water Values: Pluralism, Positionality and Praxis

The Positioned Construction of Water Values: Pluralism, Positionality and Praxis

Practices, programs and projects of urban carbon governance: Perspectives from the Australian city

Water marginalization at the urban fringe: environmental justice and urban political ecology across the North–South divide

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