Conduct of Conduits

Engineering, Desire and Government through the Enclosure and Exposure of Urban Water

Bibliographic Data

ID4886992
AuthorsM D Usher (0000-0003-4627-8457, University of Manchester, corresponding author), Mark Usher
Year2018
Volume42
Issue2
Pages315-333
Publication date2018-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Urban and Regional Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0309-1317 • E-ISSN: 1468-2427
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1468-2427.12524
OpenAlexW2789858079
LanguageEN
Citations received18
References cited66

This article scrutinizes the relationship between governmental reform and infrastructural change in Singapore. Focusing on the role of engineers, it is argued that neoliberal decentralization has occurred through the physical reconfiguration of drainage. Neoliberalization is conceived as a localized technical response to a public health crisis resulting from infrastructural enclosure, which is orchestrated on and through the material-ecological environment. A closed drainage system consisting of trapezoidal canals and concrete culverts had produced an ideal breeding environment for dengue-carrying mosquitoes, undermining the state's centralized approach to water governance. This article reorients Michel Foucault's analytics of government around engineering and the 'milieu' to consider how drainage infrastructure was consequently opened up to an emerging civil society to relieve pressure on the state and allow greater public participation in the surveillance and management of canals, pipes and culverts. Alongside landscape architects, engineers would increasingly turn to naturalized waterways and open catchment policy to encourage citizens to form an affective bond with water and to inculcate principles of individual ownership and responsibility through physical contact. The article contends that with the proliferation of integrated resource management systems, governmental power is increasingly exercised through the liveliness as well as the fetishization of urban infrastructure

Corporate governance · Decentralization · Economics · Management · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Law · Public Administration · Socioeconomic Development in Asia · Urban Planning and Governance · Water Governance and Infrastructure

Tools

Open DOISci-HubOpen Access