Geography Department Research Seminar : Dr Maria Rusca (Department of Geography, King's College London)
| Dates: | 28 March 2018 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 17:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Environment, Education and Development |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, Adults, Alumni, Current University students |
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Geography Department Research Seminar
Materialising critical water studies
Dr Maria Rusca (Department of Geography, King's College London)
Chaired by Ali Browne
Abstract:
Although much has been written over the last few decades about water's matter, and why it matters, there is a relative lack of empirical and
analytical detail around how the material world co-constitutes the social. Analyses of materiality rarely go beyond identifying the politics which are
embedded or re-produced through the hydrosocial or socio-technical (Linton and Budds 2014; Meehan, 2014; Kooy and Bakker, 2008). These analytical gaps have a methodological dimension: the question of how to bring in complex questions of the nature and materiality of water requires a genuinely
interdisciplinary approach. The analytical focus of this paper is on the role of infrastructure in shaping condition and quality of access in urban spaces. Through the empirical analysis of water supply in Lilongwe (Malawi) and Maputo (Mozambique) we reflect on how infrastructures transform
physicochemical and bacteriological quality of (drinking) water, and co-determine continuity or discontinuity of water supply across urban spaces. We then reflect on how these non-human transformations in water quality and quantity shape everyday urban life experiences of accessing water. As we come to recognise the multiple ontologies of water, we call for an interdisciplinary approach that engages with both the biophysical properties and characteristics of water and the choreographies of power that determine infrastructural configurations and how water flows through it. Although conceptualisations of the production of inequalities in the urban waterscape are grounded on different disciplines, academic cultures and epistemologies, the engagement of social science water studies with hydraulics and engineering scholars has remained largely unexplored. Such an engagement, we conclude, contributes to both taking materiality seriously and decentering the analyses of water infrastructures.
Bio:
Maria Rusca is a Lecturer in Water and Development in the Geography Department at King's College London. Her research aims at improving
understanding of the dynamics of basic service provision in urban and suburban spaces in the global South, including informality and the urban waterscape, gendered water supply and everyday hygiene practices, and the politics of water's properties and the agency of water infrastructures.
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