Paper short abstract:

This paper examines conflicts over water allocation in South Asia as enmeshed with asymmetrical relations among situated agents, uneven geographies and imbricated materialities. An attention to justice is inextricable to systems-level solutions.

Paper long abstract:

Natural resource distribution in the contemporary era is increasingly performed in a discourse of security and risk. Water management, though never an apolitical issue, has become increasingly contentious in many areas where decisions about water governance and management have power over both lifestyles and lives. This paper examines conflicts over water allocation as enmeshed with asymmetrical relations among situated agents, uneven geographies and imbricated materialities. Specifically, it examines the multi-scalar inequities of water systems in South Asia with a focus on India and Bangladesh. Eighteen months of ethnographic data demonstrate the relevance of the trans-corporeal, intersectional, interspecies perspectives to the systemic networking of structural, materialist and Anthropocene research. By documenting and theorizing socio-environmental politics of water crisis, this paper examines how an attention to justice is inextricable to systems-level solutions.