scholarly journals Pipes and praxis: a methodological contribution to the urban political ecology of water

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucero Radonic ◽  
Sarah Kelly-Richards
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Water Governance ◽  
Resource Scarcity ◽  
Applied Anthropology ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
Water And Sanitation

This article contributes to the urban political ecology of water through applied anthropological research methods and praxis. Drawing on two case studies in urban Sonora, Mexico, we contribute to critical studies of infrastructure by focusing on large infrastructural systems and decentralized alternatives to water and sanitation provisioning. We reflect on engaging with residents living on the marginal hillsides of two rapidly urbanizing desert cities using ethnographic methods. In the capital city of Hermosillo, Radonic emphasizes how collaborative reflection with barrio residents led her to reframe her analytical approach to water governance by recognizing informal water infrastructure as a statement of human resilience in the face of social inequality, resource scarcity, and material disrepair. In the border city of Nogales, Kelly-Richards reflects on the outcomes of conducting community-based participatory research with technical students and residents of an informally settled colonia around the construction of a composting toilet, while also investigating municipal government service provision efforts. Our article invites readers to view these infrastructure alternatives as ways to explore how applied anthropology can advance the emancipatory potential of urban political ecology through a collaborative investigation of uneven urbanization and basic service provisioning. We emphasize everyday situated relationships with infrastructure in informally organized neighborhoods. Using praxis to collectively investigate the complex and entangled relations between large piped water and sanitation projects and locally developed alternatives in under serviced areas, the two case studies reveal lessons learned and illuminate grounded research openings for social justice and environmental sustainability.Key words: Applied anthropology, infrastructure, political ecology, praxis, water governance, social justice

scholarly journals Applying anthropology to what? Tactical/ethical decisions in an age of global neoliberal imperialism

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 357
Author(s):  
James R. Veteto ◽  
Joshua Lockyer
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Applied Anthropology ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Ethical Decisions

This article introduces the Journal of Political Ecology Special Section on 'towards a political ecology of applied anthropology.' We provide a brief overview and analysis of the history and application of applied and practicing anthropology. Examining moral and ethical issues related to the application of anthropology, we assess current endeavors and make suggestions for future directions from a political ecology perspective. Introducing five articles that exemplify our approach, we identify common themes and particular contexts that both unify and distinguish each of the contributions. Throughout this introduction, we propose a potential guidepost for a political-ecology informed applied anthropology: any applied anthropology that engages, documents, promotes, and supports cultural diversity, social justice and environmental sustainability is just. Conversely, any applied anthropology that threatens cultural diversity and environmental sustainability is unjust.Key words: applied anthropology, imperialism, political ecology, neoliberalism, ethics

scholarly journals Hydrosocial hinterlands: An urban political ecology of Southern California’s hydrosocial territory

2020 ◽  
pp. 251484862090938 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alida Cantor
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Urban Geography ◽  
Southern California ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
Process Of Urbanization ◽  
Rural Places ◽  
The City ◽  
Empirical Case Studies

Urban political ecology has conceptualized the city as a process of urbanization rather than a bounded site. Yet, in practice, the majority of urban political ecology literature has focused on sites within city limits. This tension in urban political ecology evokes broader conversations in urban geography around city-as-place versus urbanization-as-process. In this paper, I bring an urban political ecology analysis to examine co-constitutive urbanization and ruralization processes, focusing on sites beyond city boundaries in three empirical case studies located within the broader hydrosocial territory of urban Southern California. By focusing on the rural components of hydrosocial territories, I show that each of the three case studies has been shaped in very different ways based on its enrollment within urban Southern California’s hydrosocial territory; in turn, the rural has also shaped the cities through flows of politics and resources. The paper demonstrates how urban political ecology can be usefully applied to understand rural places, illustrating how processes of urbanization can be involved in the production of distinctly rural—and distinctly different—landscapes. The cases demonstrate the utility of urban political ecology as an analytical framework that can examine co-constitutive urbanization/ruralization processes and impacts while maintaining enough groundedness to highlight place-based differences.

Towards conceptions of green gentrification as more-than-human

2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862110017
Author(s):  
Katherine Kocisky
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Community Gardens ◽  
Neighborhood Change ◽  
Urban Greening ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Riverfront Development

This article seeks to expand scholarly conceptions of green gentrification by emphasizing the complex and contradictory connections between nonhumans and humans as critical for understanding neighborhood change. Drawing from posthumanist scholarship, as well as literature on urban political ecology, urban greening, gentrification and “just green enough,” this article argues that to understand green amenities not only as sites of injustice, but rather as dynamic sites of injustice and resistance, requires disaggregating amenities from traditional conceptions of green gentrification. In doing so, it is possible to analyze the complex agencies of greenspace itself as connected to pluralized forms of (in)justice associated with race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class. To illustrate this, I use a more-than-human framework to reconceptualize three existing “just green enough” case studies of (1) riverfront development, (2) urban linear parks, and (3) community gardens to show how injustice and resistance are not only broad-based, but unique to amenity and place. The aim of this review is to offer new ways of understanding and analyzing the dialectic of injustice and resistance associated with green gentrification.

scholarly journals Reading History and Power in Urban Landscapes: The Lens of Urban Political Ecology

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Coelho
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
Urban Nature ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
Reading History ◽  
Indian Cities ◽  
Selection Of

This essay sketches some of these features and their implications, employing five intersecting rubrics—hybrids, boundaries, histories, values, and peripheries. Together, these frames build an account of how the urban engine (or metabolism, in the language of urban political ecology), with its distinctive pace and drivers, assembles dynamic entities that defy easy categorization and carry powerful political stakes. The essay draws on a selection of empirical work across Indian cities (including my own writings on Chennai) and on the theoretical contributions of urban political ecology, to argue for a more complex understanding of urban nature as constituted through historical projects of urbanization, and of environmental sustainability as inseparable from questions of social justice.

scholarly journals A Transnational Urban Political Ecology of Water Infrastructures: Global Water Policies and Water Management in Hanoi

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucía Wright-Contreras
Keyword(s):  
Water Management ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Water Governance ◽  
Safe Drinking Water ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Developmental Issues ◽  
Water Policies ◽  
Global Water

Using the lens of a transnational urban political ecology of water infrastructures in Vietnam, this article contributes to the understanding of the intersections between urbanization patterns, socioecological problems, financial schemes, and the power relations embedded in Hanoi’s urban water supply through politics of scale that aim to ensure safe drinking water. With the analysis of global water policies and their implications in the Southeast-Asian context, the objectives of this work are to (a) reveal the scalar nature of Hanoi’s water infrastructures by situating water management processes in a broader context of developmental issues, and (b) review lessons and prospects of past and future global targets of access to safe drinking water. The evidence of multilevel water governance processes and cross-sectoral challenges of safe water provision emphasizes the need for global networks of cooperation to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 6 and contribute to other sectors aiming to “transform our world.”

scholarly journals Challenging issues of urban biodiversity related to ecohydrology

2008 ◽  
Vol 68 (4 suppl) ◽  
pp. 983-1002 ◽  
Author(s):  
EM. Mendiondo
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
River Restoration ◽  
Water Governance ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Urban Biodiversity ◽  
Environmental Services ◽  
Complementary Approach

This paper aims to outline challenging issues of urban biodiversity in order to address yardsticks related to ecohydrology, and with a complementary approach to eutrophication impacts. The vision of environmental services, urbanization's consequences and management aspects of water governance are also depicted. Factors of river restoration, environmental tradeoffs and socio-cultural constrains are envisaged through concept questions towards emerging aspects that figure out methodological guides, strategic challenges for stakeholders and inter-disciplinary opportunities. Examples from case studies on restoration and management, from experiences and lessons learned, are enclosed, with brief discussions and literature citation.

scholarly journals Indigenous Water Governance in Australia: Comparisons with the United States and Canada

Water ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1639 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Tsatsaros ◽  
Jennifer Wellman ◽  
Iris Bohnet ◽  
Jon Brodie ◽  
Peter Valentine
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Water Resources Management ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Water Governance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Resources Management ◽  
Indigenous Participation

Aboriginal participation in water resources decision making in Australia is similar when compared with Indigenous peoples’ experiences in other common law countries such as the United States and Canada; however, this process has taken different paths. This paper provides a review of the literature detailing current legislative policies and practices and offers case studies to highlight and contrast Indigenous peoples’ involvement in water resources planning and management in Australia and North America. Progress towards Aboriginal governance in water resources management in Australia has been slow and patchy. The U.S. and Canada have not developed consistent approaches in honoring water resources agreements or resolving Indigenous water rights issues either. Improving co-management opportunities may advance approaches to improve interjurisdictional watershed management and honor Indigenous participation. Lessons learned from this review and from case studies presented provide useful guidance for environmental managers aiming to develop collaborative approaches and co-management opportunities with Indigenous people for effective water resources management.

RECYCLED WATER RISK PERCEPTION - A COMPARISON OF TWO CASE STUDIES

2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Hurlimann
Keyword(s):  
Risk Perception ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Perceived Risk ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Recycled Water ◽  
Urban Centre ◽  
On Line ◽  
Line Survey ◽  
Water Uses

This paper reports results from a study comparing perceived risk associated with various recycled water uses in two Australian locations, both in the state of Victoria: the capital city Melbourne, and Bendigo a regional urban centre. Both locations are experiencing ‘drought’, but Bendigo is experiencing this in a more acute manner. A case study is used in each location. Both case studies involve future use of recycled water in new commercial buildings. An on-line survey was used to measure attitudes to recycled water of the future occupants of both buildings. The study found perceived risk associated with 11 uses of recycled water increased as the use became increasingly personal. Interestingly, no difference in perceived risk associated with 11 uses of recycled water was found between locations. Prior experience (use) of recycled water was found to be a significant and positive factor in reducing risk perception. Various attitudinal variables were found to be significant influences on perceived risk. Results indicate that reducing perceived risk of recycled water use may increase satisfaction with its use.

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