Women And Water Politics: An Ethnographic Gender Perspective

Magala, Joyce Mpalanyi; Kabonesa, Consolata; Staines, Anthony

doi:10.5040/9781350223899.ch-008

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“…This is critical since the experience of poverty and powerlessness is invariably gendered, as evidenced, for example, in Megan Vaughan's narration of famine in Malawi (Vaughan, ). Water poverty is also experienced in gendered ways, in Sub‐Saharan Africa as it is elsewhere, with water‐related tasks usually being assigned to women, while most water‐related powers and rights remain with men (Magala, Kabonesa, & Staines ; Hellum, Kameri‐Mbote, & van Koppen, ; UN, ). Even radical social transformation and the enactment of progressive legislation do not necessarily grant women access to or knowledge of their rights, as Mary Hames notes in the South African case (Hames, ).…”

Section: Reflections On Class and Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Mathur

Mulwafu

2018

WIREs Water

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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

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Section: Reflections On Class and Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%