Water Materialities and Infrastructures: Forging Future Paths

• In Event: Theory Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 14

Abstract

What does the study of water tell us about world-making? And how does the world-making unfold through water? Today, where colonial histories and regimes are still lived and experienced in biophysical, socio-material, and socio-cultural relations in the so-called post-colonial world, and where water is still being weaponized in inter-state and intrastate armed conflicts, I focus on water materialities and infrastructure in an era already complicated with climate colonialities and climate vulnerabilities, arguing that understanding water materialities in its plural and water infrastructure differently will implicate how we engage with the present futures.

In this paper, I begin by reconsidering categories and relations, prompting an inquiry into how we can critically study water itself and water infrastructure within the contexts of environmental sociology and future instabilities and ecological challenges. The paper unfolds across five primary sections. First, a critical examination of the philosophical underpinnings is presented through a literature review of assemblages, actor-network theory, and new materialism. These frameworks are considered the basis for studying human and non-human relationality in ways that destabilize analyses of human-centric agency. Second, a dedicated exploration of the critical infrastructure literature is undertaken, with particular emphasis on temporality as a pivotal analytical category. Third, a specialized section elucidates the materiality of water and how different scholars have engaged with it. Concurrently, a literature review outlines how scholars have approached water infrastructure as both means and outcomes within diverse political and power structures. Fourth, a proposition is advanced for situating my discussion within the domain of environmental sociology. Lastly, the implications of the preceding discussions are extrapolated when viewed through the lens of climate crises, conflicts, and the inherent unpredictability of the future.

Author

• Yomna ElSharony, Cornell University