Making water workacross changing scales.pptVIP

Making water work across changing scales Will Medd, Centre for Sustainable Water Management and Department of Sociology, Lancaster University. Presentation draws on work from Medd and Marvin (2005), Medd and Moss (2005) and Medd and Shove (2006) “it is simultaneously a raw material (abstracted from a river), a product of the labour process (having been filtered, pumped, and chemically treated), and an instrument of labour (used not only in industrial manufacturing but also as a physiological requirement of workers) … water may serve multiple uses simultaneously, and be required to perform several functions in one circuit throughout the hydrological cycle” (Karren Bakker 2004 p.32-33). Socio-technical approach to water The water sector is a socio-technical network consisting of the co-constitution of technological, social, political, and economic factors For example how demand is shaped by ‘systems of provision’ i.e. the array and sequence of activities, technologies and institutional arrangements that come together in the provision of a particular product or service. Key shifts in socio-technical organisation of the water sector Commercialisation (e.g. efficiency) Demand side management (e.g. campaigns) Technology mix (e.g. decentralised technology) Spatial differentiation (e.g. local self-provision) (Guy, Marvin and Moss, 2001) Processes of transition? Simple Conventional New/Future Scale and Regions “First there are regions in which objects are clustered together and boundaries are drawn around each cluster” (Mol and Law 1994) NW Water Region But there are questions about other ‘regions’ within such a region, and how problems of interplay between different interests may become exacerbated Scale and networks “Second, there are networks in which distance is a function of the relations between the elements and difference a mater of relational variety” (Mol and Law 1994) “If I were to capture some urban water in a glass, retrace the netwo