An interdisciplinary political ecology of drinking water quality. Exploring socio-ecological inequalities in Lilongwe’s water supply network
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8944555 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Maria Rusca (0000-0003-4513-3213, King's College London, corresponding author), Akosua Sarpong Boakye-Ansah (0000-0002-2764-2922, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education), Alex Loftus (0000-0002-8136-1224, King's College London), Giuliana Ferrero (0000-0002-2375-0395, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education), Pieter Van Der Zaag (0000-0002-1215-2656, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 84 |
| Pages | 138-146 |
| Publication date | 2017-06-28 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Geoforum (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0016-7185 • E-ISSN: 1872-9398 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.06.013 |
| OpenAlex | W2732168027 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 37 |
| References cited | 87 |
Urban political ecology attempts to unravel and politicize the socio-ecological processes that produce uneven waterscapes. At the core of this analysis are the choreographies of power that influence how much water flows through urban infrastructure as well as where it flows, thereby shaping conditions and quality of access in cities. If these analyses have been prolific in demonstrating uneven distribution of infrastructures and water quantity, the political ecology of water quality remains largely overlooked. In this paper, we argue that there is a clear theoretical and practical need to address questions of quality in relation to water access in the South. We show that conceptual resources for considering differentiated drinking water quality are already present within urban political ecology. We then contend that an interdisciplinary approach, highlighting the interdependencies between politics, power, and physiochemical and microbiological contamination of drinking water, can further our understandings of both uneven distribution of water contamination and the conceptualisation of inequalities in the urban waterscape. We illustrate our argument through the case of water supply in Lilongwe, Malawi. Our political ecology analysis starts from an examination of the physicochemical and microbiological quality of water supplied by the formal water utility across urban spaces in Lilongwe. We then present the topography of water (quality) inequalities in Lilongwe and identify the political processes underlying the production of differentiated water quality within the centralised network. This paper thereby serves as a deepening of urban political ecology as well as a demonstration of how this approach might be taken forward in the analysis of urbanism and water supplies
Argument (complex analysis · Biology · Environmental planning · Geography · Inequality · Interdependence · Political ecology · Political science · Politics · Quality (philosophy · Social science · Sociology · Water quality · Water supply · Child Nutrition and Water Access · Ecology · Environmental Engineering · Environmental Science · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Water resources management and optimization
Sociohydrology
Farming for socio-ecological resilience
The urban political ecology of ‘haphazard urbanisation’ and disaster risk creation in the Kathmandu valley, Nepal
Household access to water, sanitation, and hygiene services in Cross River State, Nigeria
Prioritising the purpose
Homescapes make the world
Unsafe waters
Water Infrastructure and the Imaginary of Unfinished Urban Modernity in Taiwan
Political Ecology and Social Production of Drinking Water Scarcity in India's Contaminated Landscapes
Political ecology of household water security among the urban poor in Malawi
Households’ access and expenditure on water services
Everyday practices in the production of uneven water pricing regimes in Lilongwe, Malawi
National urban policy making and its potential for sustainable urbanism
Assessing the Impacts of Large-Scale Water Transfer Projects on Communities
Toward supported self-provisioning
From public service access to service quality
Liquid borders
Escaping the Capitalist Black Hole
Towards a modest imaginary? Sanitation in Kampala beyond the modern infrastructure ideal
Sanitation configurations in Lilongwe
Towards a future-oriented political ecology of climate change
Living with fragile infrastructure
Grabbing groundwater
Reshaping State‐Led Agricultural Modernization in China
The Urban Metabolism of Waterborne Diseases
Defending water and life
Everyday geographies of uneven water infrastructures and practices in China
De-centering the urban waterscape via patterns, relations and traces of drinking water quality in Kaolack, Senegal
Pluralising the materiality of water
All dried up
Lively water infrastructure
Water with larvae
"Spirit hospitals and "concern with herbs
Uneven Geographies of the Embodied Effects of Water Insecurity Among Women Irrigators in Northern Ghana
Critically assembling water quality ethics beyond thresholds, hierarchies and best practices
Understanding everyday water experiences through flows
Reconceptualising the drinking waterscape through a grounded perspective
Concrete and Clay
Everyday Environmentalism
City of Flows
Social Power and the Urbanization of Water
Uneven Development
What Is Water?
In the Nature of Cities
Water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions to reduce diarrhoea in less developed countries
Of liquid dreams
Power, Nature and Neoliberalism
Everyday Environmentalism
Power, Nature, and the City. The Conquest of Water and the Political Ecology of Urbanization in Guayaquil, Ecuador
Soil erosion in the West African Sahel
Quality of Water the Slum Dwellers Use
Un/Known Waters
Bathing without water, and other stories of everyday hygiene practices and risk perception in urban low-income areas
Gender, Class, and Access to Water
Mapping operation and maintenance
Slum upgrading and inclusive municipal governance in Harare, Zimbabwe
Cracks and the Crisis of Abstract Labour
Contesting Urban Metabolism
Access to Water for the Urban Poor in Cape Town
A political–industrial ecology of water supply infrastructure for Los Angeles
(Re-)Conceptualizing water inequality in Delhi, India through a feminist political ecology framework
A critical physical geography of urban soil contamination
Splintered networks
Return migration and the reiteration of gender norms in water management politics
The geography of multiple scarcities
Suffering for water, suffering from water
Tool-power
Contesting large-scale water supply projects at both ends of the pipe in Kathmandu and Melamchi Valleys, Nepal
Revitalizing the production of nature thesis
Modernity and Hybridity
Progress Report—Urban Political Ecology
The city as a hybrid
The production of space
Triangulating health
Urban Political Ecology1
Material worlds? Resource geographies and the `matter of nature
Provincializing Urban Political Ecology
Political geographies of the object
An Urban Political Ecology of Climate Change Governance
Assemblages and Actor-networks
Urban Political Ecology
Renting Over Troubled Waters
On the Network, off the Map
The neoliberalization of nature
The Power of Water
Archipelagos and networks
The Village in the City, the City in the Village
Water, Technology, and Development
Violent Geographical Abstractions
Cyborg Urbanization
I could not be idle any longer
Health as a Nature - Society Question
Incongruent Waterworlds
Vibrant Matter
Municipal disconnect
Colonial and Postcolonial Modernities in Two African Cities
Methodological Reflections on the Use of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Science in Human Ecological Research
| Unique citing works | 37 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4,63 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2026 (9) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 37 |