Governmentality and the conduct of water

China's South–North Water Transfer Project

Bibliographic Data

ID8962884
AuthorsSarah Rogers (0000-0003-0437-5187, Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies University of Melbourne Parkville Victoria 3010 Australia, corresponding author), Jon Barnett (0000-0002-0862-0808, School of Geography University of Melbourne Parkville Victoria 3010 Australia), M Webber (0000-0002-7697-3453, The University of Melbourne), Brian Finlayson (0000-0001-8708-3475, School of Geography University of Melbourne Parkville Victoria 3010 Australia), Mark Wang (0000-0002-1813-3632, School of Geography University of Melbourne Parkville Victoria 3010 Australia)
Year2016
Volume41
Issue4
Pages429-441
Publication date2016-08-11
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTransactions of the Institute of British Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-2754 • E-ISSN: 1475-5661
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/tran.12141
OpenAlexW2513586445
LanguageEN
Citations received37
References cited65

Governmentality is a way of thinking about dispersed practices of governing, including attempts to render space governable. China's South–North Water Transfer ( SNWT ) project, the world's largest interbasin water transfer project, is a programme of government that attempts to render the distribution of water across space more governable and administrable. This article analyses English and Chinese academic, media and government documents through a governmentality lens. It aims to examine the SNWT project's machinery, mentality and spatiality, including its narrative, its constitution of objects and subjects in space, its multiple techniques of government, and its physical and administrative assemblages. In decentring the problem of the state in relation to the SNWT project we can learn much about both the politics of water and the nature of Chinese governmentalities. This article shows how the SNWT naturalises water scarcity, normalises the pre‐eminence of North China, sustains engineering over regulatory solutions and reconfigures hydrosocial relations, while also outlining the limits to and endemic conflicts within this vast programme of government

China · Constitution · Government (linguistics · Governmentality · Interbasin transfer · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Water resource management · Water resources · Water scarcity · Water transfer · Ecology · Environmental Science · Law · Public Administration · Water Governance and Infrastructure

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