L Harris
Biographic Data
| ID | 36025 |
|---|---|
| NAME | L Harris |
| GIVEN NAMES | L |
| FAMILY NAME | Harris |
| SIGNATURE | HARRIS L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of British Columbia |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1700-1902 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 66 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 953 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 66 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
Annual Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English
River co-learning arenas: Principles and Practices for Transdisciplinary Knowledge Co-Creation and Multi-Scalar (Inter)action
This paper develops the methodological concept of river co-learning arenas (RCAs) and explores their potential to strengthen innovative grassroots river initiatives, enliven river commons, regenerate river ecologies, and foster greater socio-ecological justice. The integrity of river systems has been threatened in profound ways over the last century. Pollution, damming, canalisation, and water grabbing are some examples of pressures threatening t…
Can household water sharing advance water security? An integrative review of water entitlements and entitlement failures
An increasing number of studies find that water sharing-the non-market transfer of privately held water between households-is a ubiquitous informal practice around the world and a primary way that households respond to water insecurity. Yet, a key question about household water sharing remains: is water sharing a viable path that can help advance household water security? Or should water sharing be understood as a symptom of water in security in …
Re-conceptualizing climate maladaptation: Complementing social-ecological interactions with relational socionatures
Climate maladaptation is often studied using an “interactional ontology.” • “Relational ontologies” deepen the nature, causes, and redressal of maladaptation. • Maladaptation is constituted through dynamic material and discursive relations. • A case from Maharashtra, India demonstrates the necessity of relational approaches. Cases of climate maladaptation are increasingly documented. Its identification and redressal has become a priority for rese…
Resilience counter-currents: Water infrastructures, informality, and inequities in Cape Town, South Africa
In 2017 and 2018, Cape Town faced historically unprecedented water shortages. With the imminent possibility of running out of water, the city’s leadership prioritized reducing water demand and expanding new water sources, while also reinvigorating the goal of seeking to build system-level water resilience for the longer term. Beyond the context of Cape Town, the crisis captured global attention, highlighting ongoing and future water security chal…
Greening the gentrification process: Insights and engagements from practitioners
Green gentrification implicates urban greening as a driver of neighbourhood 'upgrading' and subsequent displacement. However, it is unclear whether the concept resonates with, or supports the work of, those responsible for much of the greening occurring in cities - urban green planners/practitioners. We interviewed 33 planners/practitioners in Canada to refine our understanding of the relationships between urban greening and gentrification. We fo…
Variations in household water affordability and water insecurity: An intersectional perspective from 18 low- and middle-income countries
Compounding systems of marginalization differentiate and shape water-related risks. Yet, quantitative water security scholarship rarely assesses such risks through intersectionality, a paradigm that conceptualizes and examines racial, gendered, class, and other oppressions as interdependent. Using an intersectionality approach, we analyze the relationships between household head gender and self-reported socio-economic status, and water affordabil…
Psychological distress and life satisfaction among Black working adults in the U.S. during the Covid-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately impacted Black Americans. Rates of hospitalization, mortality, and morbidity increased and racial inequities in unemployment, job benefits, and working conditions widened. This study identifies specific factors associated with the well-being of Black adults in the U.S. workforce one year into the pandemic. Data came from the 2021 National Health Interview Survey (N = 1,984). Ordinary least squares regressi…
Women's participation in the mining industry: Tracing the business case across Apec countries
From "trust" to "trustworthiness: Retheorizing dynamics of trust, distrust, and water security in North America
Assumptions of trust in water systems are widespread in higher-income countries, often linked to expectations of "modern water." The current literature on water and trust also tends to reinforce a technoscientific approach, emphasizing the importance of aligning water user perceptions with expert assessments. Although such approaches can be useful to document instances of distrust, they often fail to explain why patterns differ over time, and acr…
Riverhood: Political Ecologies of Socionature Commoning and Translocal Struggles for Water Justice
Mega-damming, pollution and depletion endanger rivers worldwide. Meanwhile, modernist imaginaries of ordering 'unruly waters and humans' have become cornerstones of hydraulic-bureaucratic and capitalist development. They separate hydro/social worlds, sideline river-commons cultures, and deepen socio-environmental injustices. But myriad new water justice movements (NWJMs) proliferate: rooted, disruptive, transdisciplinary, multi-scalar coalitions …
Lived experiences of ‘peak water’ in the high mountains of Nepal and Peru
Peak water describes the hydrological response of glacier-fed rivers to climate change, indicating that warming first drives increasing discharge until a glacier mass loss threshold is surpassed and discharge falls below values observed prior to contemporary climate warming. Although the physical principles of peak water are well understood and accepted, there remains little empirical work evaluating how hydrological dynamics associated with peak…
Interrogating differences: Intersectionality and participatory livelihood development in the upland forest of Tripura (Northeast India)
Towards enriched narrative political ecologies
Work on narrative, story, and storytelling has been on the rise across the humanities and social sciences. Building on significant work on these themes from Indigenous, Black, and Feminist scholarship, and other varied traditions, this piece explores and elaborates the potential regarding the elicitation, sharing, and analysis of stories for nature-society studies. Specifically, the piece examines core contributions along these lines to date, as …
Beyond Local Case Studies in Political Ecology: Spatializing Agricultural Water Infrastructure in Maharashtra Using a Critical, Multimethods, and Multiscalar Approach
Political ecologists (PEs) have powerfully illuminated dynamics responsible for the uneven distribution of resources and risk in society. However, localized PE approaches have been criticized as insufficient for producing careful generalizations needed to affect policymaking. We offer an approach to critically explore factors that shape the distribution of climate adaptation interventions—and their potential equity and sustainability-related impl…
A bridge over troubled waters
Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public
De-politicising seawater desalination: Environmental Impact Assessments in the Atacama mining Region, Chile
Everyday Experiences of Water Insecurity: Insights from Underserved Areas of Accra, Ghana
At least half of Accra's residents do not enjoy safe, secure, and affordable access to water on a regular basis. Focused on underserved communities in and around urban Accra, this essay highlights the meanings and importance of water insecurity for residents' daily lives. In particular, this essay extends beyond the well-established ways that the lack of safe and affordable access conditions poor public health outcomes, to a broader understanding…
Water sharing and the right to water: Refusal, rebellion and everyday resistance
Assessing states: Water service delivery and evolving state–society relations in Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa
This paper analyzes water services in relation to trust in government, with insights for broader state–society relations. The work is based on a multi-year and multi-sited case study of underserved areas of Cape Town, South Africa and Accra, Ghana. The analysis reveals that water quality and satisfaction are statistically linked to trust in government in South Africa, but not in Ghana. As well, while indicators of water access and quality appear …
(Dis)locating the norms: Marginalized Subjects as Protagonists in Here Comes the Sun
The objective of this article is to reflect on the notions of space and place and, in parallel, on displacement, focusing specifically on the Caribbean space, as outlined by Edouard Glissant (1989) and later Carole Boyce The present work is based on decolonial studies that historically situate the origin, constitution and permanence of the modern/colonial power matrix. It is necessary to produce art, knowledge and criticism that move away, subver…
Health, environment and colonial legacies: Situating the science of pesticides, bananas and bodies in Ecuador
Pesticide-related health impacts in Ecuador's banana industry illustrate the need to understand science's social production in the context of major North-South inequities. This paper explores colonialism's ongoing context-specific relationships to science, and what these imply for population health inquiry and praxis. Themes in postcolonial science and technology studies and critical Latin American scholarship guide this exploration, oriented aro…
Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare Vol. 45 No. 2
The research focused on two aspects of political involvement among social workers.The first was the direct political involvement of social workers on behalf of their clients, and the second, the social workers' encouragement of their clients' involvement in political activity.The main purpose of the research was to identify the factors that explain these two types of political involvement among social workers.The data were collected by means of a…
Hybrid regulatory landscapes: The human right to water, variegated neoliberal water governance, and policy transfer in Cape Town, South Africa, and Accra, Ghana
Critical video engagements: Empathy, subjectivity and changing narratives of water resources through participatory video
Multiple ontologies of water: Politics, conflict and implications for governance
We ask what it would mean to take seriously the possibility of multiple water ontologies, and what the implications of this would be for water governance in theory and practice. We contribute to a growing body of literature that is reformulating understanding of human-water relations and refocusing on the fundamental question of what water 'is'. Interrogating the political-ontological 'problem space' of water governance, we explore a series of on…
Inserting rights and justice into urban resilience: A focus on everyday risk
Resilience building has become a growing policy agenda, particularly for urban risk management. While much of the resilience agenda has been shaped by policies and discourses from the global North, its applicability for cities of the global South, particularly African cities, has not been sufficiently assessed. Focusing on rights of urban citizens as the object to be made resilient, rather than physical and ecological infrastructures, may help to…
Irrigation, Gender, and Social Geographies of the Changing Waterscapes of Southeastern Anatolia
Most theorists understand gender geographies as highly differentiated and shifting, in terms of both time and space. If gender is historically and geographically contingent then the analysis of gender should be attentive to the particular conditions that materialize the very idea of gender, giving it the appearance of being fixed and natural. The physical landscape, or waterscape in the case of southeastern Turkey, is potentially central to the w…
Riverhood: Political Ecologies of Socionature Commoning and Translocal Struggles for Water Justice
Mega-damming, pollution and depletion endanger rivers worldwide. Meanwhile, modernist imaginaries of ordering 'unruly waters and humans' have become cornerstones of hydraulic-bureaucratic and capitalist development. They separate hydro/social worlds, sideline river-commons cultures, and deepen socio-environmental injustices. But myriad new water justice movements (NWJMs) proliferate: rooted, disruptive, transdisciplinary, multi-scalar coalitions …
State as Socionatural Effect: Variable and Emergent Geographies of the State in Southeastern Turkey
This article draws on recent interventions related to everyday states, state-natures, and political ecologies of the state, as well as Timothy Mitchell’s concept of “state as effect,” to detail and analyze ongoing changes in southeastern Turkey associated with the large-scale Southeastern Anatolia Project (Guneydoğu Anadolu Projesi, or GAP). Using interviews and survey data, the essay details changing narrations and understandings of the Turkish …
Negotiating hydro-scales, forging states: Comparison of the upper Tigris/Euphrates and Jordan River basins
Political ecologies of the state: Recent interventions and questions going forward
Recent waves of water governance: Constitutional reform and resistance to neoliberalization in Latin America (1990–2012)
Gender and emergent water governance: Comparative overview of neoliberalized natures and gender dimensions of privatization, devolution and marketization
This article provides a critical reading of some of the gendered dimensions of emergent water governance regimes, specifically those related to the privatization, marketization and devolution of water resources management. After first providing an overview of recent nature–society contributions related to neoliberalization processes, the article comparatively evaluates insights with respect to the gender dimensions of recent shifts in water gover…
A Discussion
Using Subjectivity and Emotion to Reconsider Participatory Natural Resource Management
Water Rich, Resource Poor: Intersections of Gender, Poverty, and Vulnerability in Newly Irrigated Areas of Southeastern Turkey
The antinomies of nature and space
Maria, Irma, Harvey, Katrina - these have become more than names. They represent several of the most recent hurricanes that have devastated communities across North America and the Caribbean. As nature-society encounters, these massive storms elevated a range of historical, sociocultural, and political economic issues to the fore - from colonialism and race, to growing patterns of inequality, government mismanagement, and the politics of knowledg…
Contested Waters: Conflict, Scale, and Sustainability in Aquatic Socioecological Systems
Adequate interpretations of the complex social processes that contribute to the transformation of aquatic ecosystems and subsequent conflicts over water demand an interdisciplinary perspective. In this special issue, we focus on the multiple causes of conflicts over water, sensitive to the complex interrelations between and within social and ecological phenomena that result in transformed and contested environments. The cases presented here--repr…
Critical video engagements: Empathy, subjectivity and changing narratives of water resources through participatory video
Intersections of gender and water: Comparative approaches to everyday gendered negotiations of water access in underserved areas of Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa
A large and growing body of literature suggests that women and men often have differentiated relationships to water access, uses, knowledges, governance, and experiences. From a feminist political ecology perspective, these relationships can be mediated by gendered labour practices (within the household, at the community level, or within the workplace), socio-cultural expectations (e.g. related to notions of masculinity and femininity), as well a…
Water and Conflict Geographies of the Southeastern Anatolia Project
While many accounts of water and conflict focus on the possibility of future interstate conflict resulting from changing quantities and qualities of freshwater, a multiscalar approach helps to demonstrate the manifold, complex, and reciprocal relations between uses of water and social/political conflicts. Using Turkey's Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) as a demonstration of the complex interrelations between water uses and social conflicts, th…
Hybrid regulatory landscapes: The human right to water, variegated neoliberal water governance, and policy transfer in Cape Town, South Africa, and Accra, Ghana
Imaginative Geographies of Green: Difference, Postcoloniality, and Affect in Environmental Narratives in Contemporary Turkey
Analyzing everyday environmental imaginaries from contemporary Turkey through the \nlenses of postcolonial, emotional-affective, and nature-society geographies, this article \noffers insights into shifting nature-society relations and possibilities. Based on a series \nof interviews and focus groups conducted in four sites (Istanbul, Ankara, Diyarbakir, and \nSanliurfa), the concept of imaginative geographies of green is offered to highlight soci…
Modernizing the nation: Postcolonialism, postdevelopmentalism, and ambivalent spaces of difference in southeastern Turkey
Citizenshit: The Right to Flush and the Urban Sanitation Imaginary
For many in the Global North, urban life means that your shit is not your problem. We postulate that a possible reason for the global sanitation failure in urban areas is a disconnect between sanitation expectations-what we term the urban sanitation imaginary-and the practices required by proposed sanitation solutions. The case study presented here is based on interviews with residents of Villa Lamadrid, a marginalized neighborhood in Buenos Aire…
Worlding the Intangibility of Resilience: The Case of Rice Farmers and Water-Related Risk in the Philippines
Framing community entitlements to water in Accra, Ghana: A complex reality
Navigating the tensions in collaborative watershed governance: Water governance and Indigenous communities in British Columbia, Canada
Towards enriched narrative political ecologies
Work on narrative, story, and storytelling has been on the rise across the humanities and social sciences. Building on significant work on these themes from Indigenous, Black, and Feminist scholarship, and other varied traditions, this piece explores and elaborates the potential regarding the elicitation, sharing, and analysis of stories for nature-society studies. Specifically, the piece examines core contributions along these lines to date, as …
The Peculiarities of the British Economy
Food of the future: The risks and realities of biotechnology
Water and Conflict Geographies of the Southeastern Anatolia Project
While many accounts of water and conflict focus on the possibility of future interstate conflict resulting from changing quantities and qualities of freshwater, a multiscalar approach helps to demonstrate the manifold, complex, and reciprocal relations between uses of water and social/political conflicts. Using Turkey's Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) as a demonstration of the complex interrelations between water uses and social conflicts, th…
Contested Waters: Conflict, Scale, and Sustainability in Aquatic Socioecological Systems
Adequate interpretations of the complex social processes that contribute to the transformation of aquatic ecosystems and subsequent conflicts over water demand an interdisciplinary perspective. In this special issue, we focus on the multiple causes of conflicts over water, sensitive to the complex interrelations between and within social and ecological phenomena that result in transformed and contested environments. The cases presented here--repr…
Irrigation, Gender, and Social Geographies of the Changing Waterscapes of Southeastern Anatolia
Most theorists understand gender geographies as highly differentiated and shifting, in terms of both time and space. If gender is historically and geographically contingent then the analysis of gender should be attentive to the particular conditions that materialize the very idea of gender, giving it the appearance of being fixed and natural. The physical landscape, or waterscape in the case of southeastern Turkey, is potentially central to the w…
Julia Álvarez and the performativity of hybrid identities
Water Rich, Resource Poor: Intersections of Gender, Poverty, and Vulnerability in Newly Irrigated Areas of Southeastern Turkey
Modernizing the nation: Postcolonialism, postdevelopmentalism, and ambivalent spaces of difference in southeastern Turkey
Gender and emergent water governance: Comparative overview of neoliberalized natures and gender dimensions of privatization, devolution and marketization
This article provides a critical reading of some of the gendered dimensions of emergent water governance regimes, specifically those related to the privatization, marketization and devolution of water resources management. After first providing an overview of recent nature–society contributions related to neoliberalization processes, the article comparatively evaluates insights with respect to the gender dimensions of recent shifts in water gover…
States at the Limit: Tracing Contemporary State-Society Relations in the Borderlands of Southeastern Turkey
There is theoretical significance to studying states and nations at their metaphorical and literal ‘borders’. Focusing on the contested border region of southeastern Anatolia, this chapter highlights the tensions, contradictions, and recent shifts in state-society relations in the rural spaces of the southeast. As I detail, state delivery of irrigated agriculture represents a recent and significant chapter in the evolving state-society relations …
Negotiating hydro-scales, forging states: Comparison of the upper Tigris/Euphrates and Jordan River basins
Neo(liberal) citizens of Europe: Politics, scales, and visibilities of environmental citizenship in contemporary Turkey
The aim of this article is to critically interrogate articulations of environmental citizenship in contemporary Turkey. Specifically, I analyse articulations of environmental citizenship through citizen and activist narratives taken from interviews and focus group discussions. I argue that first, scalar focus on local spaces and individuated responsibility for action that emerge from the narratives are crucial to understand future environmental p…
A Discussion
State as Socionatural Effect: Variable and Emergent Geographies of the State in Southeastern Turkey
This article draws on recent interventions related to everyday states, state-natures, and political ecologies of the state, as well as Timothy Mitchell’s concept of “state as effect,” to detail and analyze ongoing changes in southeastern Turkey associated with the large-scale Southeastern Anatolia Project (Guneydoğu Anadolu Projesi, or GAP). Using interviews and survey data, the essay details changing narrations and understandings of the Turkish …
Human Right to Water: Contemporary Challenges and Contours of a Global Debate
In recent years, significant debate has taken place around the concept of the “human right to water”. In this paper, we seek to respond to recent critiques and clarify the terms of the debate by presenting an in‐depth exploration of the human right to water. We explore several critiques of the concept, situate it in the context of the current neoliberalization of water provision and in relation to contemporary water challenges, and present some e…
Recent waves of water governance: Constitutional reform and resistance to neoliberalization in Latin America (1990–2012)
Using Subjectivity and Emotion to Reconsider Participatory Natural Resource Management
"The "Commonwealth of Virginia vs. Virginia Christian: Southern Black Women, Crime & Punishment in Progressive Era Virginia
In 1912, sixteen-year-old Hampton, Virginia resident and laundress Virginia Christian killed her white employer: fifty-one year-old widow and mother Ida Belote. Contributing to the expanding historical scholarship on African American women, this essay employs Christian’s life as a window into the lived experiences of some southern working-class black women during the early twentieth century. It critically interrogates Christian’s experiences as a…
Imaginative Geographies of Green: Difference, Postcoloniality, and Affect in Environmental Narratives in Contemporary Turkey
Analyzing everyday environmental imaginaries from contemporary Turkey through the \nlenses of postcolonial, emotional-affective, and nature-society geographies, this article \noffers insights into shifting nature-society relations and possibilities. Based on a series \nof interviews and focus groups conducted in four sites (Istanbul, Ankara, Diyarbakir, and \nSanliurfa), the concept of imaginative geographies of green is offered to highlight soci…
Citizenshit: The Right to Flush and the Urban Sanitation Imaginary
For many in the Global North, urban life means that your shit is not your problem. We postulate that a possible reason for the global sanitation failure in urban areas is a disconnect between sanitation expectations-what we term the urban sanitation imaginary-and the practices required by proposed sanitation solutions. The case study presented here is based on interviews with residents of Villa Lamadrid, a marginalized neighborhood in Buenos Aire…
Participation, politics, and panaceas: Exploring the possibilities and limits of participatory urban water governance in Accra, Ghana
Morinville, C., and L. M. Harris. 2014. Participation, politics, and panaceas: exploring the possibilities and limits of participatory urban water governance in Accra, Ghana. Ecology and Society 19(3): 36. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-06623-190336
Gender and small‐scale fisheries: A case for counting women and beyond
Marine ecosystem–scale fisheries research and management must include the fishing effort of women and men. Even with growing recognition that women do fish, there remains an imperative to engage in more meaningful and relevant gender analysis to improve socio‐ecological approaches to fisheries research and management. The implications of a gender approach to fisheries have been explored in social approaches to fisheries, but the relevance of gend…
Heroines of the French Epic: A Second Selection of Chansons de Geste
As those in medieval gender studies must already be aware, narrative texts which feature prominent feminine characters are often difficult to discover. This is frequently attributed to outdated or absent translations, a dearth in sources, or a lack of awareness surrounding these narratives. Medieval French tales, particularly the chansons de geste, offers some tantalizing insight into cultural womanhood by featuring female characters that are bes…
Deconstructing the Map after 25 Years: Furthering Engagements with Social Theory
Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization - Volume 50, Number 1, Spring 2015
Revisiting the Human Right to Water from an environmental justice lens
Leila M. Harrisa*, Lucy Rodinaa & Cynthia Morinvilleaa Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, 2202 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z4
Political science (46 works) · Sociology (45 works) · Water Governance and Infrastructure (35 works) · Geography (28 works) · Economics (25 works) · Law (24 works) · Politics (23 works) · Law (18 works) · Ecology (15 works) · Business (14 works)