(Re-)Conceptualizing Water Inequality in Delhi, India through a Feminist Political Ecology Framework

Citation:

Truelove, Yaffa. 2011. “(Re-)Conceptualizing Water Inequality in Delhi, India through a Feminist Political Ecology Framework.” Geoforum, Themed Issue: New Feminist Political Ecologies, 42 (2): 143–52. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2011.01.004.

Author: Yaffa Truelove

Abstract:

This article demonstrates how a feminist political ecology (FPE) framework can be utilized to expand scholarly conceptualizations of water inequality in Delhi, India. I argue that FPE is well positioned to complement and deepen urban political ecology work through attending to everyday practices and micropolitics within communities. Specifically, I examine the embodied consequences of sanitation and ‘water compensation’ practices and how patterns of criminality are tied to the experience of water inequality. An FPE framework helps illuminate water inequalities forged on the body and within particular urban spaces, such as households, communities, streets, open spaces and places of work. Applying FPE approaches to the study of urban water is particularly useful in analyzing inequalities associated with processes of social differentiation and their consequences for everyday life and rights in the city. An examination of the ways in which water practices are productive of particular urban subjectivities and spaces complicates approaches that find differences in distribution and access to be the primary lens for viewing how water is tied to power and inequality.

Keywords: water, inequality, gender, Urban India, Criminality, Environmental politics, feminist political ecology

Topics: Caste, Civil Society, Class, Corruption, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Gender Analysis, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Political Economies Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2011