Literacy, translation, practices

This article presents a case study about groundwater detection in a mountainous area of South Kordofan in Sudan. The inhabitants of these areas regularly experience water scarcity during dry seasons. Several factors have intensified this scarcity recently, among them protracted civil wars (1987‐2002, 2011-?) and a steady decrease of rainfall. The study follows an attempt to establish a new source of water in the village of Abol. While the task seems merely to relate governmental hydrogeologists' technical knowledge to specific environmental sites, their work is actually part of on-going negotiations of appropriate social action. In order to conceptualize the observed processes, the article reflects on the concept of environmental literacy and its ability to point to multiple individual perspectives on physical and social environments. The argument also employs the terms « translation » as an analytical concept to grasp attempts to create compatibility of social action and « practices » as individual social behaviour, which integrates both habitus and situational translation. The article concludes that careful scrutiny of these ways of accessing water allows for the identification of the ambiguities necessarily occurring during translation. In a situation favourable to open‐ended negotiations, this may provide new perspectives on how to address these ambiguities

Action (physics · Argument (complex analysis · Identification (biology · Literacy · Negotiation · Political science · Scarcity · Scrutiny · Situational ethics · Social science · Sociology · African history and culture analysis · Law · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Ecology

• Scientific Work and Uncertainty

  Open Access•Susan Leigh Star•Social Studies of Science•1985

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• The Classification of Drinking Water between Public Administration and Rural Communities in South Kordofan, Sudan. Travelling Models and Technologies

  Enrico Ille•Sociologus•2012

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• Far-Fetched Facts

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• Environmental literacy in interpreting endangered sustainability

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• Entre sédiments, strates et failles

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• Dikes and Dams, Thick with Politics

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• Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation

  Open Access•Michel Callon•The Sociological Review•1984

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• Water Sustainability

  B Orlove, Steven C Caton•Annual Review of Anthropology•2010

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